ASU women's rights and political groups oppose the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh and are banding together to raise awareness of what his confirmation could mean for ASU students.
Trump chose Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court nominee in July 2018 to replace retiring SCOTUS Justice Anthony Kennedy.
A day before the widely publicized U.S. Senate hearing, where Kavanaugh and his first accuser Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Young Democrats at ASU, the ASU chapter of Planned Parenthood Generation Action and Undocumented Students for Educational Equity collaborated in a phone banking event.
Since the news of Blasey Ford's sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh first went public on Sept. 16, there have been three other women who have come forward with sexual misconduct claims against him, bringing the total to four.
The three groups held the event for people to call their representatives and voice their opposition of Kavanaugh's potential confirmation and their concerns on his records on issues such as immigration and reproductive rights.
Members from Undocumented Students for Education Equity co-hosted the phone banking event and said they were worried about how Kavanaugh's confirmation would affect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients.
With a vote on the DACA program believed to go to the Supreme Court, the group's communications director and sustainability junior Karina Dominguez said she fears that Kavanaugh will vote against it if confirmed.
“We know he won’t rule in our favor. He’ll rescind the program if he has a chance to,” she said.
Alex Baker, business data analytics senior and vice president of Young Democrats at ASU, said that Kavanaugh’s past rulings play a role in their decision to oppose his nomination.
“In general, we also looked at Kavanaugh's potential rulings against established law like the Affordable Care Act and his past rulings that grant additional power to the executive branch, which is an odd thing among Republicans given they’re usually the party of a weaker executive branch,” he said.
Kavanaugh said in statements made to the Heritage Foundation in November 2017 that the court was wrong when they upheld the Affordable Care Act insurance mandate as constitutional.
ASU's Planned Parenthood Generation Action vice president and political science senior, Angelica Romero, said Kavanaugh’s conflation of contraceptives as "abortion-inducing drugs” during his confirmation hearing on Sept. 7 is a worrying sign of what’s to come if he is to be confirmed.
Kavanaugh clarified his remarks and said he was referencing a specific case, not giving his opinion on contraceptives, according to CNN.
“I believe Kavanaugh would be taking us back many years, so we have to put the pressure on our students and inform them who he is and the dangers he would have to our communities and to our clinics," Romero said.
Reach the reporter at wmelhem@asu.edu or follow @wissmel on Twitter.
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