INTEL REPORT--Two Supreme Court justices are being urged to recuse themselves from upcoming LGBTQ rights cases after a picture of them with the president of an anti-LGBTQ organization.
Last week, Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh – both conservatives nominated by Republican presidents – appeared in a picture with Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which Brown shared on Twitter. Now the liberal organization Take Back the Court is calling on Alito and Kavanaugh to recuse themselves from upcoming LGBTQ cases.
NOM is an anti-LGBTQ organization that was set up to fight marriage equality, but also opposes LGBTQ anti-discrimination measures and supports conversion therapy. Brown is also the SPLC designated hate group International Congress of Families, which organizes internationally to oppose LGBTQ equality.
So a photo (left) of Brown with two Supreme Court Justices is troubling, especially since the Court is currently considering three cases related to LGBTQ rights: Bostock v. Clayton County, Altitude Express v. Zarda, and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC. NOM filed amicus briefs in those cases, asking the Court to reject LGBTQ equality.
Aaron Belkin of Take Back the Court sent them a letter to ask them to recuse themselves from the cases “light of serious concerns about your impartiality raised by your decision to pose for a photograph for social media” with Brown.
Belkin cited the Code of Conduct for Federal Judges, which says that a judge should not allow “relationships to influence judicial conduct or judgment” and that a judge “should neither lend the prestige of the judicial office to advance” their own private interests.
But he also noted that the Code of Conduct does not apply to the Supreme Court, still asking the justices to hold themselves to that standard and recuse themselves. (Read the rest)
-cw
