President Trump will soon announce his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Anthony Kennedy. The retiring justice has been described as a conservative with an asterisk. Emily Bazelon, who covers the high court for the New York Times Magazine, spoke to Colorado Matters about Kennedy’s divided political point of view.
While Kennedy was often a reliable conservative, he also famously sided with liberal judges on a few big cases, hence the asterisk. Kennedy notably backed gay rights issues and wrote the opinion for the case that legalized gay marriage. But he also supported Citizens United, and penned the opinion that paved the way for super PACs.
Bazelon believes a new, more conservative Supreme Court, would not directly overturn Roe v. Wade, but instead move to limit and gut it. She said the same could be true of the Voting Rights Act and other swaths of labor laws as the justices decide more cases that favor conservative outcomes
