WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) spoke at the Senate Judiciary Committee urging colleagues not to proceed with a Supreme Court nominee in fear that a rushed decision will put health care on the line.

“There are so many other things stressing our society, stressing our constituents, stressing our families and communities between the pandemic, health care, injustice, and inequality. Why add this to the plate? My Republican colleagues insist on racing forward with a partisan confirmation process that I am convinced will further tear this country apart,” said Senator Coons. “We should not be proceeding with a nominee, consistent with the precedent my Republican colleagues themselves set just four years ago.”

Senator Coons continued, “The [Supreme Court] case that will be heard a week after the election is a case in which, with the president’s urging, the Court may well remove gender discrimination protection from half of all Americans, may well remove pre-existing condition discrimination protection from over a hundred million Americans where six million recently infected by this pandemic have new pre-existing conditions, and may will deny access to healthcare for twenty million more. Why should we proceed? Why not step back? Why not avoid this needless partisan exercise that will further divide us?”

Full video is available here. A transcript is provided below. 

Sen. Coons: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Each member of this committee understands the immense weight of our responsibilities. But I have to say that as I came to this historic Kennedy Caucus Room in which such landmark moments in the history of our modern republic have taken place, I have a sense of dread. We're in the midst of a global pandemic, a pandemic that has sickened more than 6 million Americans, taken more than 200,000 American lives, and we're in the midst of a terrible recession – the worst since the Great Depression, one made worse than it ever needed to be by the bungled response of the Trump administration to that pandemic. And it has been renewed just in recent hours, we continue to be in the midst of a reckoning around racial injustice. 

There are so many other things stressing our society, stressing our constituents, stressing our families and communities between the pandemic, health care, injustice, and inequality. Why add this to the plate? My Republican colleagues insist on racing forward with a partisan confirmation process that I am convinced will further mire this committee in a weeks-long partisan battle that will further tear this country apart. We should not be proceeding with a nominee, consistent with the precedent my Republican colleagues themselves set just four years ago. And Mr. Chairman, you repeated 2 years ago, as our colleague, my friend from Alaska has recently said, ‘fair is fair.’ If that's the standard by which you lived four years ago, it's the standard by which we should live today. I know each of us in this room cares deeply about our nation and our institutions, and so I urge you to consider how a rushed confirmation process will further divide this divided country, how a rushed confirmation process will distract us from our duty to come together again and provide needed relief from this pandemic and recession to our constituents, how a rushed confirmation process in the midst of a partisan election season may well do lasting harm to this institution and the Supreme Court. 

Mr. Chairman, I know how deeply you care about these institutions. We work together with others on this committee to protect the special counsel. It's my sincere plea that you consider the commitments you made in the past, to our people, to this body, to our future, and step back from this process. Not only is the primary process over – voting has already started in twenty-five states –  we are just thirty-nine days and twelve hours from an election. There is no precedent for filling a Supreme Court vacancy this close to a general election. 

And so I plead with all of you – we should not be proceeding. We should do this promptly following the next inauguration. Last night, I went to pay my respects to Justice Ginsburg who lies in repose on the steps of the Supreme Court and will soon move to the Capitol where she'll be the first woman in American history to lie in state. She passed on Rosh Hashanah, marking her as someone known as a righteous person, of great gifts of leadership, and her record certainly shows that. But she dictated her dying wish to her granddaughter that the voters should choose the next president, the next president – her successor. Why does that matter? Because she was someone, as the chairman remarked in the opening, who had a historic friendship with Justice Scalia – probably the farthest apart from her in ideology on the Court. But Justice Ginsburg lived her life by an important reminder. She once said, ‘fight hard for the things you believe in, but do so in a way that will bring others to your side.’ She spent her life in service to improving the justice, the equity of our nation by participating in the system, by legislating, litigating, fighting, advocating, supporting all of that on behalf of equality. 

Justice Ginsburg's legacy was a relentless fight for equality. The case that will be heard a week after the election is a case in which, with the president’s urging, the Court may well remove gender discrimination protection from half of all Americans, may well remove pre-existing condition discrimination protection from over a hundred million Americans where six million recently infected by this pandemic have new pre-existing conditions, and may will deny access to healthcare for twenty million more. Why should we proceed? Why not step back? Why not avoid this needless partisan exercise that will further divide us? 

Justice Ginsburg gave her life in service to this nation because she knew the fragility of our institutions like the Court, the Congress, even our elections themselves. In days when our president is saying concerning, even alarming things about our long tradition of peaceful transitions of power, I will close by calling on my friends on this committee. Please think deeply about the consequences of the course on which we seem set. Thank you.

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