New Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh recently joined with the court's liberal justices and Chief Justice John Roberts to decline hearing a case involving funding for Planned Parenthood, and Judge Andrew Napolitano said Tuesday he hopes Kavanaugh didn't cave to political pressure.
Only four of the nine justices must agree for the court to take up a vote, but in this case, just Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch voted to hear appeals from two states who oppose using public funding for the organization. Napolitano, the Fox News senior judicial analyst, told "Fox and Friends" he finds that odd.
“Six justices said ‘we don’t want to hear it,'" said Napolitano. "Three did. What’s unique is the three who did wrote a dissent. This is very, very rare.”
Further, the three justices chided "their junior Catholic pro-life colleague" Kavanaugh without mentioning him by name, said Napolitano.
“Did Brett Kavanaugh vote this way to demonstrate to (Sen.) Dianne Feinstein that he’s open-minded?" asked Napolitano. "I hope not. I hope he voted with intellectual honesty. That’s why we give judges and justices — I once had this — life tenure, so they can be perfectly intellectually honest and not worry about what the politicians or editorial writers or TV commentators or public think.”
Part of the issue is that the rules for funding are different among the states, said Napolitano, so the issue was whether Planned Parenthood could use a state and compel it to spend money against its will to conform with federal regulations.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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