Now that Brett Kavanaugh is safely ensconced on the Supreme Court as a reliable vote for all things 19th Century, nobody's paying that kind of attention to judges anymore. But the long-running project of saddling future generations with the constitutional theorizing of the distant past goes merrily on, with the help, alas, of the Democratic Majority Leader in the Senate. The job of stuffing the federal judiciary with larval Scalias is still being done. The good folks at the Alliance For Justice have the skinny on Allison Jones Rushing, who has been nominated for an empty seat on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. That court has jurisdiction over Maryland, South Carolina, and pieces of North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

Ms. Jones Rushing, currently employed by Williams and Connolly in Washington, a white-shoe firm at which she specializes in corporate appeals, has all the usual credentials: Duke Law; clerkships for David Sentelle—a sweet fella who overturned Ollie North's Iran-Contra conviction, and who helped foist Ken Starr on us all—and for Neil Gorsuch, and for Clarence Thomas. I trust I don't have to run down the political CVs of the last two, and, anyway, this is quite the trifecta of references. She's also a member of the Federalist Society, as if you hadn't guessed this already.

Allison Jones Rushing wc.com

As the AFJ also points out, she's done a lot of work for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a virulent anti-LGBTQ operation that's been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In that capacity, Ms. Jones Rushing has gone reliably bughouse on the subject of marriage equality. From the AFJ's report:

In 2013, Rushing participated in a panel at Capitol Hill Baptist Church titled “Henry Forum: ‘Enemies of Mankind’: Religion and Morality in the Supreme Court’s Same-Sex Marriage Jurisprudence.” In this discussion, Rushing frequently referenced Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion that the holding in United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013), departed from “traditional” concepts of marriage and morality. Rushing said that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) “explicitly stated that its purpose was ‘protecting the traditional moral teachings reflected in heterosexual-only marriage laws’” and that “[t]he congressional record indicated that DOMA reflected ‘moral disapproval of homosexuality, and a moral conviction that heterosexuality better comports with traditional (especially Judeo-Christian) morality.’”

Rushing then highlighted the dissenting justices in Windsor who emphasized “the fact that DOMA codified the definition of marriage that had prevailed throughout most of human history and, at the time of DOMA’s enactment, had been adopted by every State in the nation and every nation in the world, was evidence that the law did have a valid basis, or at least explained how lawmakers could enact such a law motivated by something other than hatred.” Additionally, she noted how “[m]ost interestingly, the dissenters observed that the majority could have decided the case on legal principles that would have accused DOMA’s supporters simply of making a legal error, which is an error that one could make in good faith. But instead, the majority chose the [sic] write the opinion in a unique way that calls it bigotry to believe that homosexuality does not comport with Judeo-Christian morality.”

And here's the most frightening thing in the AFJ report.

Allison Jones Rushing is 36 years old.

It never stops.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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