Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), alongside her new ally Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA), has issued a statement that calls on those in the Senate to label Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh liars.
In the mentioned letter, which they sent directly to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the pair stated that both Kavanaugh and Gorsuch had stated lies to the Senate when they claimed during their respective confirmation hearings that Roe v. Wade was a settled precedent.
“Our Constitutional Republic cannot tolerate Supreme Court Justices who lied in order to get confirmed. The legitimacy of the Court is at stake,” exclaimed Lieu in a social media post, also showing a screenshot of the letter they had penned. “Letter from @AOC and me requesting the Senate to make a finding on whether Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch lied to the American people.”
Our Constitutional Republic cannot tolerate Supreme Court Justices who lied in order to get confirmed. The legitimacy of the Court is at stake.
Letter from @AOC and me requesting the Senate to make a finding on whether Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch lied to the American people. pic.twitter.com/snQQf2cVKm
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) July 11, 2022
AOC also chose to share Lieu’s post and went on to add a bit of a caption of her own, stating, “We cannot allow Supreme Court nominees lying and/or misleading the Senate under oath to go unanswered. Both GOP & Dem Senators stated SCOTUS justices misled them. This cannot be accepted as precedent. Doing so erodes rule of law, delegitimizes the court, and imperils democracy.”
We cannot allow Supreme Court nominees lying and/or misleading the Senate under oath to go unanswered.
Both GOP & Dem Senators stated SCOTUS justices misled them. This cannot be accepted as precedent.
Doing so erodes rule of law, delegitimizes the court, and imperils democracy. https://t.co/yZW6BKnqFG
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) July 11, 2022
“We request that the Senate make its position clear on whether Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch lied under oath during their confirmation hearings,” explained AOC and Lieu in the letter, saying, “We must call out their actions for what they were before the moment passes so that we can prevent such a mendacious denigration of our fundamental rights and the rule of law from ever happening again.”
Both Kavanaugh and Gorsuch stated that during their confirmation hearings that they did consider Roe — along with its successor, Planned Parenthood v. Casey —to be a case of settled precedent in the eyes of the court as a whole. Many took these comments to mean that they would never issue a vote to overturn the pair of landmark abortion cases, which they chose to do at the end of June. However, stating that the cases were known “precedent” did not actually equate to meaning that the Justices were lying, nor did it actually mean they were promising to never vote against the case as precedent.
The fact that both Casey and Roe were “precedent” did not mean that they were finalized as constitutional or that they were not just bad law in general, however. Plessy v. Ferguson — which allowed for segregation under the banner of “separate but equal” — was also stated to be precedent once, at least until Brown v. Board of Education came along and showed that it should be reversed.