A coalition of advocacy groups gathered Wednesday outside Sen. Patrick Leahy’s office in downtown Burlington to demand he “use every method at [his] disposal” to stop the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The protest came on the third day of questioning of Barrett in the Senate.
The event was organized by the local group Community Voices for Immigrant Rights, but featured speakers from Migrant Justice, the Black Perspective, the AFL-CIO, and others. In turn, speakers discussed the potential ramifications of Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court — for workers, for immigrants, for women, for Black communities — and called on Leahy, as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders, to take action.
“I want you to hear the voice of the migrant community,” said Thelma Gomez, an organizer with Migrant Justice, via a translator. “We need to use our voices. We have a responsibility to stand up and to work together.”
Letters that Community Voices delivered to Leahy and Sanders warned that the consequences of Barrett’s confirmation will be “felt for years to come,” citing her pro-life position on abortion and her previous actions, as an appellate judge, to limit immigration. The confirmation, said Tom Proctor of Rights and Democracy Vermont, will be a “hammer blow” for communities nationwide.
Though just over a dozen people gathered outside Leahy’s office, seven organizations had signed on to the letter.
Barrett, a social conservative and a constitutional originalist, would cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the court if confirmed.
Leahy made headlines this week with his tough questioning of Barrett in Senate hearings, first pressing her on whether she would recuse herself if the presidential election decision went to the Supreme Court, and, on Wednesday, demanding an opinion from the judge on the Affordable Care Act.
Barrett declined to say whether she would recuse herself in the case of a contested election, and, on Wednesday, answered that she had not stated that the ACA violates the Constitution, as Leahy has alleged. “I am not hostile to the ACA,” she told senators on Tuesday, though she has previously criticized the Supreme Court for upholding the legislation.
For Community Voices and other groups that gathered Wednesday, Leahy’s tough line of questioning was not enough.
“We want him to go beyond his duty of signing things or not signing things,” Maria Castine, a member of Community Voices’ steering committee, told VTDigger at the event, to use his position as the most senior member of the U.S. Senate to take further action.
Leahy’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
In contrast, the letter Community Voices delivered to Sen. Sanders praised his condemnation of Barrett’s nomination. In September, Sanders wrote in a statement that he “strongly oppose[d] this nomination” and urged constituents to “fight as hard as we can to ensure that this nominee is not confirmed.”
Since, Sanders has said that Congress should redirect its focus from the Barrett hearings to another stimulus check for workers.
At the event, Castine, Gomez, and others called for immigrant justice in Vermont, looking beyond Barrett. Reproductive rights are bound up in immigration rights, they said, referring to allegations of high rates of hysterectomies at an ICE facility in Georgia that surfaced last month. They called on Leahy and Sanders to protect both.
“This state is not an exception,” Gomez said, in terms of injustices faced by immigrant communities. And the pandemic has left many of Vermont’s migrant communities especially vulnerable, even as the state has started rolling out a unique stimulus program for its migrant farmworkers.
If Barrett is confirmed, organizers said on Wednesday, the situation could worsen.
