Kavanaugh’s record so far suggests he’s among the most conservative to come from the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. CBD’s analysis compared him to Judge David Sentelle, whom President Ronald Reagan appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in 1987. Sentelle decided against protections in around 57 percent of relevant cases.

By comparison, Judge Merrick Garland, whom President Bill Clinton appointed to the same court in 1997, favored wildlife protection in about 54 percent of his species-related cases. President Barack Obama nominated Garland to the Supreme Court in 2016, only to have the Republican-controlled Senate refuse to consider his nomination.

In writing the Endangered Species Act as it did in 1973, Congress largely deferred to the expertise of the Interior Department in protecting endangered species, said Snape. But Kavanaugh’s past decisions have tended to ignore that, particularly in cases that affect how private land can be developed.

One such case was 2011′s Otay Mesa Property v US Department of Interior decision, in which Kavanaugh led a majority of judges in reversing a lower court’s decision that federal wildlife scientists had properly determined that 143 acres of land owned by developers near Chula Vista, California, along the state’s border with Mexico, were critical habitat for the endangered San Diego fairy shrimp.

Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion that one “lone sighting” across eight surveys of the “tiny aquatic animals—about the size of ants,” with a life span of “only about 30 days,” was inadequate proof that the species’ habitat included the land the Interior Department was proposing to protect.

The ruling came despite the fact that the species was, by definition, rare and that the Interior Department’s own experts had concluded the opposite—that given their tiny size and documented low hatching rate, finding even one fairy shrimp in Otay Mesa was good evidence that the species still occupied the area. “It’s a hostility towards public interest science and the notion that there actually are any limits to economic growth. He just never—almost never—disagrees with those corporate legal arguments.”

Kavanaugh decided, Snape said, “essentially to second guess the scientists’ determination of where a species could recover.”

Snape argues that such judgements are in line with Kavanaugh’s arch-conservative political beliefs, which prioritize property rights above all else.

“I would say that it’s a hostility towards public interest science and the notion that there actually are any limits to economic growth,” said Snape. “He just never—almost never—disagrees with those corporate legal arguments.”

Kavanaugh’s past votes display a “striking pattern of deciding against the interest of the species,” said Sarah Krakoff, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“There is no pattern of either deferring or not deferring to the government,” added Krakoff. “The pattern really is that whoever is asking for more protection for the species loses.”