The ERA Gets CPR | Is The End Of Roe v. Wade Upon Us?
February 13, 2020
WON'T WORK THIS TIME
|Richard Wolf with USA Today notes that precisely four years ago, JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA passed away on a hunting trip and left a vacancy at the Supreme Court that PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA was never able to fill. Now that we’re once again in a presidential election year, Democrats are likely to argue — as Republicans did in 2016 — that Trump cannot appoint a justice should there be another opening. But Wolf explains, “With both the White House and Senate in Republican hands, McConnell has said the 2016 precedent does not apply. He’s vowed to confirm as many federal judges as possible.”
TOP-ED
|In this week’s column, Linda Greenhouse with The New York Times hones in on the “meanness” radiating out of Washington and trickling down through the federal judiciary — particularly on the issue of immigration. She also takes a look at a recent decision from SCOTUS which she says “gave the Trump administration precisely what it needed to put into effect one of the most meanspirited and unjustified of all its recent immigration policies.” This was, of course, the “radical expansion” of the “public charge” rule.
ERA GETS CPR
|The House of Representatives today voted to extend the deadline for ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment as part of the Constitution. Although the vote was largely symbolic (MITCH MCCONNELL is “not a supporter” of the equal rights measure), Sheryl Gay Stolberg with The New York Times reports that the House’s move revives “a long-simmering cultural debate over whether the nation’s founding charter should guarantee equal rights to all citizens regardless of sex.”
THE BEGINNING
|Garrett Epps for The Atlantic opines that America could be nearing the end of the Roe era as Supreme Court justices prepare to hear arguments in an abortion case out of Louisiana that could upend the decades-old precedent. Epps wants to know, “Now that JUSTICE KENNEDY is gone at last, do his old precedents still apply?”
OF THE END?
|The fight for reproductive rights is also being waged in Congress where Democrats are trying to push legislation that would codify Roe v. Wade, while Republicans are readying to vote for a measure that would ban the procedure after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Jessie Hellmann with The Hill writes, “While none of the measures will pass in a divided Congress, the battles highlight how both sides are trying to get ahead of an issue that will play a role in the race for the White House and control of Congress.”