Amy Coney Barrett Is Trump's Likely Supreme Court Pick. Here's What We Know About Her.
Judge Amy Coney Barrett is President Donald Trump’s likely pick for a Supreme Court seat to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Following Ginsburg’s death last week, Trump said he plans to install a new Supreme Court justice just weeks away from the Nov. 3 presidential election. Multiple outlets reported Friday that Barrett, a conservative judge who has been on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit since 2017, is Trump’s likely pick to fill the spot.
The 48-year-old judge and mother of seven would be the youngest justice on the court if she is nominated. Here’s what we know about her:
She has been tied to a religious group that called female leaders “handmaids.”
Barrett has, and may still be, a member of People of Praise, a group that describes itself as a “charismatic” Christian community and that previously referred to its female leaders as “handmaids.” This prompted comparisons to Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in which women are enslaved.
At the time the comparisons surfaced, People of Praise, which believes in miraculous healing and speaking in tongues, claimed the term came from a Bible verse. The group no longer uses it.
A photograph and other references to Barrett were scrubbed from People of Praise’s website after Trump nominated her to the 7th Circuit in 2017, The New York Times reported, and the group declined to say whether Barrett was still a member.
She called Roe v. Wade an “erroneous decision.”
Barrett said the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision ensuring women’s access to abortion was an “erroneous decision” in a 2003 article.
Ginsburg, on the other hand, had long stood in favor of the ruling, defending women’s right to choose since her confirmation to the bench in 1993. Following the justice’s death, conservatives signaled they would work to reverse the landmark decision, should they confirm a new conservative judge to the bench.
During Barrett’s...
