Washington-February 12 (Online): United States (US) President Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court is coming under fire from Republicans even before he unveils his pick, a sign of a potentially testy Senate confirmation battle to come.
Joe Biden said the nation’s highest court should “look like the country” and it was “long past time” an African-American woman served on the bench.
After Justice Stephen Breyer announced his plan to retire last month, the Democratic president reiterated his vow to replace the liberal stalwart with a Black woman.
Biden said he has a “short-list of nominees who are incredibly well-qualified” and he would announce his choice before the end of February.
Among the names being circulated are veteran judges from some of the top law schools in the country such as Harvard and Yale.
Conservative Republican lawmakers have pushed back at the notion that the vacancy on the nine-member court should be filled by a Black woman.
“Black women are, what, six percent of the US population?” said Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will conduct the nomination hearing.
“He’s saying to 94 percent of Americans, ‘I don’t give a damn about you,'” Cruz said. “He’s saying, ‘If you’re a white guy, tough luck. If you’re a white woman, tough luck. You don’t qualify.'”
“I want a nominee who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog,” said Senator John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana who also sits on the committee. “I want a nominee who’s not going to try to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to try to advance a ‘woke agenda.'”
For Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, Biden’s selection would be the beneficiary of a racially discriminatory “sort of quota.”
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