White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Monday had a puzzling reaction to the Supreme Court’s ruling protecting LGBTQ employees from workplace discrimination, during an interview on Fox News.
In a 6-3 decision, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Robert and Justice Neil Gorsuch voted with the court’s liberals in favor of the workplace protections for LGBTQ individuals. Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas issued scathing dissents to Monday’s blockbuster ruling.
Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, accused the majority of “[u]surping the constitutional authority of the other branches.” Similarly, Kavanaugh alleged in his own dissent that the landmark ruling is a “transgression of the Constitution’s separation of power.”
When asked about the Supreme Court ruling earlier Monday that delivered a huge win for LGBTQ rights advocates, Conway first replied that President Trump will probably field questions on the ruling during a roundtable focused on senior citizens. She added that she was “struck by the concurrence and the dissent” by Justices Kavanaugh and Samuel Alito.
Conway said that Alito “made clear something I want us all to remember,” before launching into a rant about how the role of the three branches of government is “sacrosanct and it’s in our Constitution.”
“The legislature makes the laws, the President executes the laws and judiciary interprets the laws — and that is important also,” Conway said. “I think that Justice Alito made clear that he doesn’t think this is about textualism. We’ve had the Civil Rights Act for 56 years and everybody has understood what it meant.”
Conway added that she’s “not going to get into the merits of the decision one way or the other” and that she personally believes in “liberty and justice for all.”
“As I said earlier, I think it’s very important though to stick to a statute or a law as it is written when that is before the United States Supreme Court,” Conway said. “If people want to change the law they should go to the Congress.”
Conway then threw Congress under the bus, accusing it of not seeming to “work as hard as the other two branches.”
Watch Conway’s remarks below:
Kellyanne Conway says courts should “stick to the statutes” in reaction to Supreme Court decision on LGBTQ rights pic.twitter.com/XrOIRdZtCz
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) June 15, 2020
