Ketanji Brown Jackson sworn in, becomes 1st Black woman on Supreme Court
Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in to the Supreme Court on Thursday, shattering a glass ceiling as the first Black woman on the nation’s highest court. The 51-year-old Jackson is the court’s 116th justice, and she took the place of the justice she once worked for. Justice Stephen Breyer’s retirement was effective at noon. Moments later, joined by her family, Jackson recited the two oaths required of Supreme Court justices, one administered by Breyer and the other by Chief Justice John Roberts. “With a full heart, I accept the solemn responsibility of supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States and administering justice without fear or favor, so help me God,” Jackson said in a statement issued by the court. “I am truly grateful to be part of the promise of our great Nation. I extend my sincerest thanks to all of my new colleagues for their warm and gracious welcome.” Roberts welcomed Jackson “to the court and our common calling.” The ceremony was streamed live on the court’s website. All the justices except for Neil Gorsuch attended the swearing-in, the court said. There was no immediate explanation for Gorsuch’s absence. Jackson, a federal judge since 2013, is joining three other women — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Amy Coney Barrett. It’s the first time four women will serve together on the nine-member court. Biden nominated Jackson in February, a month after Breyer, 83, announced he would retire at the end of the court’s term, assuming his successor had been confirmed. Breyer’s earlier-than-usual announcement and the condition he attached was a recognition of the Democrats’ tenuous hold on the Senate in an era of hyper-partisanship, especially surrounding federal judgeships. The Senate confirmed Jackson’s nomination in early April, by a 53-47 mostly party-line vote that included support from three Republicans. Jackson had been in a sort of judicial limbo since, remaining a judge on the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., but not hearing any cases. Biden elevated her to that court from the district judgeship to which she was appointed by President Barack Obama. Glynda Carr, president of Higher Heights for America, an organization that advocates for the growth of Black women’s political power, said the timing of Jackson’s swearing-in was bittersweet. “Although we celebrate her today, one Black woman or a cohort of Black women can’t save this democracy alone. We are a piece of it and we are doing our work, our part. She’s going to forever reshape and shape that court. But she’s just a piece of the work that needs to happen moving forward,” Carr said. Because of Jackson’s appointment, Judith Browne Dianis, a Black lawyer in Washington, said she intends to end her protest against joining the Supreme Court Bar. She started it when Justice Clarence Thomas was confirmed in 1991. She said that even the series of conservative rulings from the court over the past week cannot take away from the significance of Thursday’s ceremony. “This is a momentous occasion and it’s still a beautiful moment,” said Dianis, executive director of the civil rights group Advancement Project. But, Dianis added, “she’s joining the court at a time when conservatives are holding the line and trying to actually take us back, because they see the progress that’s being made in our country. It’s like the Civil War that never ended. That’s the court that she’s joining.” Jackson will be able to begin work immediately, but the court will have just finished the bulk of its work until the fall, apart from emergency appeals that occasionally arise. That will give her time to settle in and familiarize herself with the roughly two dozen cases the court already has agreed to hear starting in October as well as hundreds of appeals that will pile up over the summer. She helps form the most diverse court in its 232-year history and is the first former public defender to be a justice. The court that Jackson is joining is the most conservative that it has been since the 1930s. She is likely to be on the losing end of important cases, which could include examinations of the role of race in college admissions, congressional redistricting and voting rights that the court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, will take up next term. Today’s court now is surrounded by fencing, and justices and their families have 24-hour protection by the U.S. Marshals, the result of a law passed days after a man carrying a gun, knife and zip ties was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland house after threatening to kill the justice. The bill was introduced in May shortly after the leak of a draft court opinion that would overrule Roe v. Wade and sharply curtail abortion rights in roughly half the states. The court issued final opinions earlier Thursday after a momentous and rancorous term that included overturning Roe v. Wade’s guarantee of the right to an abortion. One of Thursday’s decisions limited how the Environmental Protection Agency can use the nation’s main anti-air pollution law to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, a blow to the fight against climate change. Republished with the permission of The Associated Press.
How black women are organizing to energize voters this fall
Meeting on the campus of Jackson State University on a recent Friday afternoon, dozens of black women came together to strategize about the upcoming midterm elections, opening the gathering with a freedom song. “The revolution done signed my name,” they moaned, invoking the names of the ancestors whose strength has willed them to persevere: Harriet Tubman. Shirley Chisholm. Aretha Franklin. Two were like them, daughters of Mississippi: Ella Jo Baker. Fannie Lou Hamer. “All of us who are in the room right now are midwives for transformation,” said Rukia Lumumba, daughter of the late Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, and co-founder of the Electoral Justice Project. The impact of such targeted work is evident. Black women went to the polls in record numbers last December to elect Doug Jones as the first Democratic senator from Alabama in 25 years. As of this week, 39 black women are nominees for the U.S. House in the November midterms, including 22 women who aren’t incumbents. The meeting soon shifted to strategy as the women plotted how to harness the energy of black female voters this fall. Scenes like these are playing out across the country as black women convene at schools, churches and homes to plan how to make sure that black voters — particularly women — are aware of the upcoming elections, registered and planning to vote and that their family members will do the same. It’s all part of an effort to reshape the politics of the Trump era when many black voters feel threatened by the country’s increasingly racially polarized climate, with concerns ranging from access to the ballot box to the president’s hostility to protesting NFL players and the violent demonstrations last summer in Charlottesville, Virginia. In California, volunteers spent last weekend working at phone banks and texting for Ayanna Pressley, whose upset victory Tuesday put her on track to become Massachusetts’ first black female congresswoman. Others have started political action committees to provide financial resources to candidates such as Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor in Georgia. If she wins in November, Abrams would become the first black female governor elected to lead a U.S. state. The Mississippi gathering was part of a stop on a tour across the Deep South organized by LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, which aims to increase political power in black communities. Brown said the time is now for black women to lead again. She pointed to incidents like the attempt to close a majority of polling places in Randolph County, Georgia, last month, as proof of the need for the kind of continued vigilance black women have long provided. “This is what we do,” she said. “We want to take it to another level. We see what’s happening in this country. . We know how to fight, we know how to win, we know how to transform, we know how to build power. We have everything we need.” Headed into November, black female organizers are hoping to elect more African-Americans to power and not simply be a reliable voting block for white Democrats. In Alabama, “black women were looked to, to bail out Democrats and the state from a very problematic candidate,” said Glynda Carr, co-founder of Higher Heights for America, which focuses on electing black women and galvanizing them as voters. “Alabama was this tipping point around black women’s leadership, when we woke up to our Twitter feed going crazy. The broader community recognized black women are the building blocks to a winning coalition.” Rhonda Briggins has long worked in politics but never considered herself “a money person” until this year. Briggins co-founded R.O.S.E.-PAC, short for Raising Our Sisters’ Electability, and started the Sisters Supporting Sisters campaign this summer, with the goal of getting 100 women at a time to donate $100 each. Her pitch is simple: When black women go to the hair salon, she asks them to talk to other women about the midterms and about the importance of voting. Along the Black Voters Matter Fund tour, Briggins told a crowd of black women organizers in Stockbridge, Georgia, “This is not a time for us to play.” “So many times we have good sisters on the ballot and they don’t have the resources,” she said. “We’ve come together . we need people to educate everyone. We’re just trying to find grassroots ways to organize African-American women. We have been always behind the scenes.” Fallon McClure, who was sitting in the audience, agreed. “For the longest time, there’s been a lot of white-led organizations, and there’d be a sprinkling of women of color, but now it’s starting to be women of color-led organizations,” said McClure, state director for Spread the Vote, started by a black woman, which is working in states with voter ID laws to get free identification cards. “Even in organizations that are still white-led, we’re seeing their whole organizing crew is starting to be black women and other women of color,” she continued. “They’ve been doing the work for a long time but weren’t necessarily getting the credit, or they had a regular, full-time job, and they were just kind of doing the work on the side because they cared about their community and wanted to make a difference, but now they’re getting the recognition for it.” Black women are also collaborating across states and across the country to maximize their efforts. Many have worked together on previous campaigns or on other grassroots projects in black communities, bringing a familiarity to the work they now share. As the Black Voters Matter Fund tour rolled through Mississippi, Kenya Collins and Cassandra Overton Welchlin chatted easily in their seats, each tooting the other’s horn and finishing the other’s sentences. Because there are so few black women on the ground, Collins explained, they have no choice but to stick together. “In Mississippi, black women have always been about community,” said Overton Welchlin, co-convener of the Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable. “If we can shift the power
