Last week’s hearings on Supreme Court hopefully Brett Kavanaugh brought a maelstrom of misinformation, confusion, and documents, oh so many documents.
On Saturday, progressive advocacy group MoveOn claimed that Kavanaugh “has stated he’d overturn” Roe v. Wade.
.@RealDonaldTrump‘s #SCOTUS pick has stated he’d overturn #Roe. Not on our watch. #StopKavanaugh & #SaveSCOTUS pic.twitter.com/v103dZkgsX
— MoveOn (@MoveOn) September 8, 2018
(MoveOn started in 1998 as an email effort to pressure congress to censure Bill Clinton and not impeach the president; “Censure President Clinton and Move On to Pressing Issues Facing the Nation” was its mantra.)
The liberal organization ThinkProgress also claimed that Kavanaugh said he would “kill” Roe v. Wade (ironic wording in the original): “Brett Kavanaugh said he would kill Roe v. Wade last week and almost no one noticed,” the headline asserts.
While ThinkProgress engages in an argument to suggest how Kavanaugh might vote in a Roe v. Wade redo, the article does not provide evidence that “Kavanaugh said he would kill Roe v. Wade.”
Has Brett Kavanaugh “stated he’d overturn #Roe”? No.
In a 2003 email—which was misrepresented in a headline from Time—Kavanaugh, providing thoughts on an op-ed, said, “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so. The point there is in the inferior court point.”
When questioned by Senator Dianne Feinstein on this email, Kavanaugh clarified that “in that draft letter, it was referring to the views of legal scholars, and I think my comment in the email was that might be overstating the position of legal scholars. And so it wasn’t a technically accurate description in the letter of what legal scholars thought.”
Kavanaugh went on to explain that Roe v. Wade “is an important precedent to the Supreme Court. It’s been reaffirmed many times. It was reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992 when the court specifically considered whether to reaffirm it or whether to overturn it. …That makes Casey precedent on precedent.”
TWS Fact Check could not find an instance where Kavanaugh “stated he’d overturn #Roe.”
Arguments surrounding whether Kavanaugh would overturn Roe aside, the Supreme Court nominee has not “stated he’d overturn” the decision. MoveOn did not respond to a request for evidence.
Being cursed with the gift of angry-email foresight requires TWS Fact Check to reiterate that this is not to suggest how the candidate might vote in the hypothetical court case, but simply to clarify that Kavanaugh has not said he would vote to “kill” the court’s decision regarding Roe v. Wade.
If you have questions about this fact check, or would like to submit a request for another fact check, email Holmes Lybrand at [email protected] or the Weekly Standard at [email protected]. For details on TWS Fact Check, see our explainer here.
