No to Alito

In the July 20, 2005, edition of Workers World, we wrote in this space that “it would have been hard for Bush to have found anyone more right-wing” than Judge John Roberts for his nomination to the Supreme Court. The track record of current Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, however, proves that even Roberts’ appointment as chief justice wasn’t enough for Bush and his reactionary backers.

Here are just a few of the highlights in Alito’s career:

* Reproductive rights

As a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, he wrote a dissenting opinion in 1991 that a state can require women to notify their husbands before being allowed to have an abortion. He was alone on the court in this view. Earlier, as an attorney in the office of Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general, Alito had drafted a legal memo urging the Justice Department to chip away at abortion rights.

In the same memo he made a clear attack against birth control, writing that “certain methods of birth control are ‘abortifacients,’ i.e., that they do not prevent fertilization but terminate the development of the fetus after conception.”

* Family and medical leave

Alito wrote the Third Circuit Court decision that Congress could not require state governments to comply with the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which requires employers to grant workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for immediate family members during birth, adoption or for a medical condition. This ruling was overturned three years later, based on deciding votes by Supreme Court Justices William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor—the very two that Roberts and potentially Alito will be replacing.

* Police powers

While working in Reagan’s Justice Department, Alito issued a 1984 memo arguing that a Memphis police officer was justified in shooting in the back of the head an unarmed 15-year-old who was running away from police to avoid a burglary arrest. The memo asserted that “the shooting can be justified as reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.... A fleeing suspect in effect states to the police: ‘Kill me or let me escape the legal process, at least for now.’”

In Doe v. Groody, Alito argued that police were reasonable in assuming that a warrant issued to search the premises of a home and the body of one named person, a male, gave police the right to strip-search a woman and her 10-year-old daughter who were also at home when the warrant was executed.

In addition, Alito has written memos supporting government immunity from lawsuits challenging wiretapping in the name of national security. He was evasive when asked if he believed the president has the right to grant immunity from prosecution to those under his command who use torture. While saying that no one is “above the law,” he indicated that the constitutionality of a recent vote in Congress against torture has not yet been determined.

He has consistently argued against affirmative action, in support of dismissals of sex and race discrimination claims, and even has gone so far as to suggest that violence against women does not exist. He said during Senate hearings on Jan. 10 that he does not remember being a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton—an organization that resisted the admission of women and people of color to the school—even though he listed membership in the group on a 1985 job application.

Alito’s nomination has stirred up opposition from a wide variety of progressive and liberal groups. Most of the media, however, have presented this as a partisan struggle by Democrats trying to keep right-wing Republicans from packing the court. They avoid exposing the attack on people of color, women and workers in general that the nomination actually poses. The capitalist media are afraid of being accused of stirring up the opposition any further.

Not us. As we suggested during the Roberts nomination, “It will take an independent rank-and-file upsurge to put the brakes on the runaway right-wing train that is in control of the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court.”