Miami’s Jackson has clear path to Supreme Court with at least one Republican’s support
Miami’s Ketanji Brown Jackson will have bipartisan support when her nomination to the Supreme Court comes up for a Senate vote in the near future after a key Republican senator announced that she’ll vote for the judge.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the only Republican to oppose Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation in 2020, said Wednesday morning that she will support President Joe Biden’s nominee to the high court following two one-on-one meetings with Jackson.
“In my meetings with Judge Jackson, we discussed in depth several issues that were raised in her hearing. Sometimes I agreed with her; sometimes I did not. And just as I have disagreed with some of her decisions to date, I have no doubt that, if Judge Jackson is confirmed, I will not agree with every vote that she casts as a Justice,” Collins said in a statement Wednesday a day after her second meeting.
“That alone, however, is not disqualifying. Indeed, that statement applies to all six Justices, nominated by both Republican and Democratic Presidents, whom I have voted to confirm.”
Jackson needs 51 votes for confirmation to the lifetime position.
Collins’ announcement that she’ll vote for the judge, first reported by The New York Times, ensures she’ll be able to win confirmation in the 50-50 Senate without need of Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote as Democrats remain united around Biden’s nominee.
Collins was one of three Republicans who supported Jackson’s confirmation last year to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, a traditional springboard to the Supreme Court.
The other two Republicans to vote for Jackson last year include, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who met with Jackson this month, and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who had a series of contentious exchanges with the judge during the hearing.
Jackson has enjoyed bipartisan support in her three previous confirmation votes, including for her appointments to the U.S. Sentencing Commission and to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia under former President Barack Obama.
But her grueling confirmation hearings last week cast doubt on whether she’d be assured GOP support again this time.
GOP senators focused their questions largely on Jackson’s sentencing decisions in seven child pornography cases during her federal district court tenure and her work on behalf of Guantanamo Bay detainees as a federal public defender and private practice attorney in the 2000s.
It’s likely that the Senate Judiciary Committee could deadlock on Jackson’s nomination when it meets to vote on it next week as Republicans on the committee have signaled their opposition. A tie vote in the committee could delay Jackson, but it would not derail her confirmation to the court given her support from Collins and other key senators who aren’t on the committee, such as moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
The assurance of bipartisan support for Jackson’s confirmation is a major win for Biden at a time the president is grappling with numerous international and domestic crises.
“She is an incredibly qualified nominee to the Supreme Court, and the president is very grateful for Senator Collins’ measured, reasonable, thorough and fair consideration and ultimately support for her,” Kate Bedingfield, the White House communications director, told reporters Wednesday.
Neither of Florida’s two senators, Republicans Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, are likely to vote for Jackson, who would be the first Floridian on the court, based on their public statements. Rubio, who shares Jackson’s Miami roots, said earlier this month that their one-on-one meeting did nothing to ease his concerns about the federal appeals judge.
In her statement, Collins pointed to the wide bipartisan majorities that conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg both received in the 1990s. She criticized the increasingly polarized process.
“No matter where you fall on the ideological spectrum, anyone who has watched several of the last Supreme Court confirmation hearings would reach the conclusion that the process is broken. Part of the reason is that, in recent years, the process has increasingly moved away from what I believe to be appropriate for evaluating a Supreme Court nominee,” she said.
Collins voted against Ginsburg’s successor and President Donald Trump’s third nominee to the court, Coney Barrett, on the grounds that the vacancy after Ginsburg’s death had come too close to the 2020 election and that voters should decide through the presidential election. She made a point of saying at the time that her vote was not a reflection of Coney Barrett’s credentials.
But in Jackson’s case, Collins touted the judge’s professional background as beyond reproach.
“Judge Jackson has sterling academic and professional credentials. She was a Supreme Court clerk, a public defender, a respected attorney, and a member of the Sentencing Commission. She has served as a federal District Court judge for more than eight years and currently sits on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals,” Collins said. “ Her stellar qualifications were confirmed by the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which awarded her its highest rating of ‘unanimously well qualified.’”
McClatchy White House correspondent Alex Roarty contributed to this report.
This story was originally published March 30, 2022 at 9:27 AM with the headline "Miami’s Jackson has clear path to Supreme Court with at least one Republican’s support."
