In 2001, Barrett was a visiting associate professor and John M. Olin Fellow in Law at George Washington University Law School. In 2002, she joined the faculty of her alma mater, Notre Dame Law School.[34] At Notre Dame, she taught federal courts, evidence, constitutional law, and statutory interpretation. In 2007, she was a visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.[35] Barrett was named a professor of law at Notre Dame in 2010, and from 2014 to 2017 held Notre Dame's Diane and M.O. Miller II Research Chair of Law.[36] Her scholarship focused on constitutional law, originalism, statutory interpretation, and stare decisis.[28] Her academic work has been published in the Columbia, Cornell, Virginia, Notre Dame, and Texaslaw reviews.[34]
At Notre Dame, Barrett received the "Distinguished Professor of the Year" award three times.[34] From 2011 to 2016, she spoke on constitutional law at Blackstone Legal Fellowship, a summer program for law school students that the Alliance Defending Freedom established to inspire a "distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law".[37] While serving on the Seventh Circuit, Barrett commuted between Chicago and South Bend, continuing to teach courses on statutory interpretation and constitutional theory.[38][39]
In 2010, Chief JusticeJohn Roberts appointed Barrett to serve on the Advisory Committee for the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure.[34] Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (2017–2020)
Nomination and confirmation
On May 8, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Barrett to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit—the federal appellate court covering Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin—after Judge John Daniel Tinder took senior status.[5][40] A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on her nomination was held on September 6, 2017.[41] During the hearing, Senator Dianne Feinstein questioned Barrett about a law review article Barrett co-wrote in 1998 with Professor John H. Garvey in which they argued that Catholic judges should in some cases recuse themselves from death penalty cases due to their moral objections to the death penalty.[42] Asked to "elaborate on the statements and discuss how you view the issue of faith versus fulfilling the responsibility as a judge today," Barrett said that she had participated in many death-penalty appeals while serving as law clerk to Scalia, adding, "My personal church affiliation or my religious belief would not bear on the discharge of my duties as a judge"[43][44] and "It is never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge's personal convictions, whether they arise from faith or anywhere else, on the law."[45] Barrett emphasized that the article was written in her third year in law school and that she was "very much the junior partner in our collaboration."[46] Worried that Barrett would not uphold Roe v. Wade given her Catholic beliefs, Feinstein followed Barrett's response by saying, "the dogma lives loudly within you, and that is a concern."[47][48][49]
The hearing made Barrett popular with religious conservatives.[29] Feinstein's and other senators' questioning was criticized by some Republicans and other observers, such as university presidents John I. Jenkins of the University of Notre Dame and Christopher Eisgruber of Princeton, as an improper inquiry into a nominee's religious belief that employed an unconstitutional "religious test" for office;[45][50] others, such as Nan Aron, defended Feinstein's line of questioning.[51]
Judge Laurence Silberman, for whom Barrett first clerked after law school, swearing her in at her investiture for the Seventh Circuit in 2018 Lambda Legal, an LGBT civil rights organization, co-signed a letter with 26 other gay rights organizations opposing Barrett's nomination. The letter expressed doubts about her ability to separate faith from her rulings on LGBT matters.[52][53] During her Senate hearing, Barrett was questioned about landmark LGBTQ legal precedents such as Obergefell v. Hodges, United States v. Windsor, and Lawrence v. Texas. She said these cases are "binding precedents" that she intended to "faithfully follow if confirmed" to the appeals court, as required by law.[52] The letter Lambda Legal co-signed read, "Simply repeating that she would be bound by Supreme Court precedent does not illuminate—indeed, it obfuscates—how Professor Barrett would interpret and apply precedent when faced with the sorts of dilemmas that, in her view, 'put Catholic judges in a bind.'"[52]
Barrett's nomination was supported by every law clerk she had worked with and all of her 49 faculty colleagues at Notre Dame Law school. 450 former students signed a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee supporting her nomination.[54][55]
On October 5, 2017, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11–9 on party lines to recommend Barrett and report her nomination to the full Senate.[56][57] On October 30, the Senate invoked cloture by a vote of 54–42.[58] It confirmed her by a vote of 55–43 on October 31, with three Democrats—Joe Donnelly, Tim Kaine, and Joe Manchin—voting for her.[27] She received her commission two days later.[2] Barrett is the first and only woman to occupy an Indiana seat on the Seventh Circuit.[59] Selected cases
Oral arguments from Cook County, Illinois v. Chad F. Wolf, one of the last cases that Barrett took in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2020
On the Seventh Circuit, Barrett wrote 79 majority opinions (including two that were amended and one that was withdrawn on rehearing), four concurring opinions (one a per curiam opinion), and six dissenting opinions (six published and one in an unpublished order).[35] Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972
In June 2019, the court, in a unanimous decision written by Barrett, reinstated a suit brought by a male Purdue University student (John Doe) who had been found guilty of sexual assault by Purdue University, which resulted in a one-year suspension, loss of his Navy ROTC scholarship, and expulsion from the ROTC affecting his ability to pursue his chosen career in the Navy.[60][61] Doe alleged the school's Advisory Committee on Equity discriminated against him on the basis of his sex and violated his rights to due process by not interviewing the alleged victim, not allowing him to present evidence in his defense, including an erroneous statement that he confessed to some of the alleged assault, and appearing to believe the victim instead of the accused without hearing from either party or having even read the investigation report. The court found that Doe had adequately alleged that the university deprived him of his occupational liberty without due process in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and had violated his Title IX rights "by imposing a punishment infected by sex bias", and remanded to the District Court for further proceedings.[62][63] Employment discrimination
In 2017, the Seventh Circuit rejected the federal government's appeal in a civil lawsuit against AutoZone; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission argued that AutoZone's assignment of employees to different stores based on race (e.g., "sending African American employees to stores in heavily African American neighborhoods") violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Following this, Barrett joined the court as it received a petition for rehearing en banc. Three judges—Chief Judge Diane Wood and judges Ilana Rovner and David Hamilton—voted to grant rehearing, and criticized the three-judge panel's opinion as upholding a "separate-but-equal arrangement". Barrett did not join the panel opinion, but voted with four judges to deny the petition to rehear the case. The petition was unsuccessful by a 5–3 decision.[64][29]
In 2019, Barrett wrote the unanimous three-judge panel opinion affirming summary judgment in the case of Smith v. Illinois Department of Transportation. Smith was a Black employee who claimed racial discrimination upon his dismissal by the department and that he was called a "stupid-ass nigger" by a Black supervisor; the department claimed Smith failed work-level expectations during probationary periods. Barrett wrote that usage of the racial slur was egregious, but Smith's testimony showed no evidence that his subjective experience of the workplace changed because of the slur, nor did it change the department's fact that his discharge was related to "poor performance".[65][66] Immigration
In June 2020, Barrett wrote a 40-page dissent when the majority upheld a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration's controversial "public charge rule", which heightened the standard for obtaining a green card.[67] In her dissent, she argued that any noncitizens who disenrolled from government benefits because of the rule did so due to confusion about the rule itself rather than from its application, writing that the vast majority of the people subject to the rule are not eligible for government benefits in the first place. On the merits, Barrett departed from her colleagues Wood and Rovner, who held that DHS's interpretation of that provision was unreasonable under Chevron Step Two. Barrett would have held that the new rule fell within the broad scope of discretion granted to the Executive by Congress through the Immigration and Nationality Act.[68] The public charge issue is the subject of a circuit split.[68][69]
In May 2019, the court rejected a Yemeni citizen and her U.S. citizen husband's challenge to a consular officer's decision to twice deny her visa application under the Immigration and Nationality Act. The U.S. citizen argued that this had deprived him of a constitutional right to live in the United States with his spouse.[70] In a 2–1 majority opinion authored by Barrett, the court held that the plaintiff's claim was properly dismissed under the doctrine of consular nonreviewability. Barrett declined to address whether the husband had been denied a constitutional right (or whether the constitutional right to live in the United States with his spouse existed at all) because the consular officer's decision to deny the visa application was facially legitimate and bona fide, and under Supreme Court precedent, in such a case courts will not "look behind the exercise of that discretion". The dispute concerned what it takes to satisfy this standard. A petition for rehearing en banc was denied, with Chief Judge Wood, joined by Rovner and Hamilton, dissenting. Barrett wrote a rare opinion concurring in the denial of rehearing en banc (joined by Judge Joel Flaum).[70][71] Abortion-related cases
Barrett had never ruled directly on abortion before joining the Supreme Court, but she did vote to rehear a successful challenge to Indiana's parental notification law in 2019. In 2018, she voted against striking down another Indiana law requiring burial or cremation of fetal remains. In both cases, Barrett voted with the minority. The Supreme Court later reinstated the fetal remains law, and in July 2020 it ordered a rehearing in the parental notification case.[72][73]
In February 2019, Barrett joined a unanimous panel decision upholding a Chicago "bubble ordinance" that prohibits approaching within a certain distance of an abortion clinic or its patrons without consent.[74][75] Citing the Supreme Court's buffer zone decision in Hill v. Colorado, the court rejected the plaintiffs' challenge to the ordinance on First Amendment grounds.[76] Second Amendment
In March 2019, Barrett dissented when the court upheld the federal law prohibiting felons from possessing firearms.[77] The majority rejected the as-applied challenge raised by plaintiff Rickey Kanter, who had been convicted of felony mail fraud, and upheld the felony dispossession statute as "substantially related to an important government interest in preventing gun violence." In her dissent, Barrett argued that while the government has a legitimate interest in denying gun possession to felons convicted of violent crimes, there is no evidence that denying guns to nonviolent felons promotes this interest, and that the law violates the Second Amendment.[78] President Trump pardoned Kanter in December 2020.[79] Criminal procedure
In May 2018, Barrett dissented when the panel majority found that an accused murderer's right to counsel was violated when the state trial judge directly questioned the accused while forbidding his attorney from speaking.[80] Following rehearing en banc, a majority of the circuit's judges agreed with her position.[81]
In August 2018, Barrett wrote for a unanimous panel when it determined that the police had lacked probable cause to search a vehicle based solely upon an anonymous tip that people were "playing with guns", because no crime had been alleged.[82] Barrett distinguished Navarette v. California and wrote, "the police were right to respond to the anonymous call by coming to the parking lot to determine what was happening. But determining what was happening and immediately seizing people upon arrival are two different things, and the latter was premature...Watson's case presents a close call. But this one falls on the wrong side of the Fourth Amendment."[83]
In February 2019, Barrett wrote for a unanimous panel when it found that police officers had been unreasonable to assume "that a woman who answers the door in a bathrobe has authority to consent to a search of a male suspect's residence." Therefore, the district court should have granted the defendant's motion to suppress evidence found in the residence as the fruit of an unconstitutional search.[84][85] Qualified immunity
In January 2019, Barrett wrote for a unanimous panel when it denied qualified immunity to a civil lawsuit sought by a defendant who as a homicide detective had knowingly provided false and misleading information in the probable causeaffidavit that was used to obtain an arrest warrant for the plaintiff.[86] (The charges were later dropped and the plaintiff was released.) The court found the defendant's lies and omissions violated "clearly established law" and the plaintiff's Fourth Amendment rights and thus the detective was not shielded by qualified immunity.[87]
In Howard v. Koeller (7th Cir. 2018), in an unsigned order by a three-judge panel that included Barrett, the court found that qualified immunity did not protect a prison officer who had labeled a prisoner a "snitch" and thereby exposed him to risk from his fellow inmates.[88][89] Environment
In Orchard Hill Building Co. v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 893 F.3d 1017 (7th Cir. 2018), Barrett joined a unanimous panel decision, written by Judge Amy J. St. Eve, in a case brought by a property developer challenging the Corps' determination that a wetland 11 mi (18 km) from the nearest navigable river was among the "waters of the United States."[90] The court found that the Corps had not provided substantial evidence of a significant nexus to navigable‐in‐fact waters under Justice Kennedy's concurrence in the Supreme Court's decision in Rapanos v. United States. The case was remanded to the Corps to reconsider whether such a significant nexus exists between the wetlands in question and navigable waters for it to maintain jurisdiction over the land.[91][92] Consumer protection
In June 2018, Barrett wrote for the unanimous panel when it found that a plaintiff could not sue Teva Pharmaceuticals for alleged defects in her IUD due to the lack of supportive expert testimony, writing, "the issue of causation in her case is not obvious."[93][94][95] Coronavirus measures
In early September 2020, Barrett joined Wood's opinion upholding the district court's denial of the Illinois Republican Party's request for a preliminary injunction to block Governor J. B. Pritzker's COVID-19 orders.[30][96] On August 12, 2021, she rejected a challenge to Indiana University's vaccine mandate, marking the first legal test of COVID-19 vaccine mandates before the Supreme Court.[97] Civil procedure and standing
In June 2019, Barrett wrote for the unanimous panel when it found that the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act cannot create a cause of action for a debtor who received collection letters lacking notices required by the statute because she suffered no injury-in-fact to create constitutional standing to sue under Article III.[98] Wood dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc. The issue created a circuit split.[99][100][101]
In August 2020, Barrett wrote for the unanimous panel when it held that a Teamsterslocal did not have standing to appeal an order in the Shakman case because it was not formally a party to the case.[102] The union had not intervened in the action, but rather merely submitted a memorandum in the district court opposing a motion, which the Seventh Circuit determined was insufficient to give the union a right to appeal.[103] Nomination to the Supreme Court
Main article: Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court nomination
President Donald Trump nominated Barrett to the Supreme Court on September 26, 2020
Barrett was on Trump's list of potential Supreme Court nominees since 2017, almost immediately after her court of appeals confirmation.[104] In July 2018, after Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement announcement, she was reportedly one of three finalists Trump considered, along with Kavanaugh and Judge Raymond Kethledge.[36][105][106]
After Kavanaugh's selection in 2018, Barrett was viewed as a possible nominee for a future U.S. Supreme Court vacancy.[107] After the death of Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18, 2020, Barrett was widely mentioned as the front-runner to succeed her.[108] On September 26, 2020, Trump announced his intention to nominate Barrett to fill the vacancy created by Ginsburg's death.[7][109]
Barrett's nomination was generally supported by Republicans, who sought to confirm her before the 2020 United States presidential election.[110] She was a favorite among the Christian right and social conservatives.[72][111][112] Democrats generally opposed the nomination, and were opposed to filling the court vacancy while election voting was already underway in many states.[110] Many observers were angered by the move to fill the vacancy only four months before the end of Trump's term, as the Senate Republican majority had refused to consider President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016, more than ten months before the end of his presidency.[110][113][114]
In October, the American Bar Association rated Barrett "well qualified" for the Supreme Court opening, its highest rating.[115] The ABA confines its evaluation to the qualities of "integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament".[116] Barrett's nomination came during a White House COVID-19 outbreak. On October 5, Senator Lindsey Graham formally scheduled the confirmation hearing,[117] which began on October 12 as planned and lasted four days.[118][119] On October 22, the Judiciary Committee reported her confirmation favorably by a 12–0 vote, with all 10 Democrats boycotting the committee meeting.[120][121] On October 25, the Senate voted mostly along party lines to end debate on the confirmation.[122] On October 26, the Senate confirmed Barrett to the Supreme Court by a vote of 52–48, 30 days after her nomination and 8 days before the 2020 presidential election. Every Republican senator except Susan Collins voted to confirm her, whereas every member of the Senate Democratic Caucus[123] voted in opposition.[124] Barrett is the first justice since 1870 to be confirmed without a single vote from the Senate minority party.[125][126]
The nature of her appointment was criticized by numerous Democratic politicians; Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called it "the most illegitimate process I have ever witnessed in the Senate."[127] Republicans responded that they were merely exercising their constitutional rights, and that accusations of hypocrisy were nothing more than "an unwarranted tantrum from the left".[127] U.S. Supreme Court (2020–present)
Justice Clarence Thomas administers the oath of office to Barrett on October 26, 2020, at the White House alongside President Donald Trump Chief Justice John Roberts administers the judicial oath to Barrett on October 27, 2020. Justice Barrett's husband, Jesse M. Barrett, holds the Bible.
Chief Justice John Roberts administers the judicial oath to Barrett on October 27, 2020. Justice Barrett's husband, Jesse M. Barrett, holds the Bible.
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