The Guardian claimed Tuesday to have scored a big scoop.
It goes like this: In law school, Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett lived in the home of one of the founders of the People of Praise, the Christian ecumenical group to which she has some affiliation. That is the story. There is nothing more. Barrett lived in student housing owned by Catholics when she studied law at Notre Dame. Because Notre Dame is Catholic.
Laughably, the Guardian article actually suggests that the judge’s previous housing accommodations may say a lot about her Catholic faith and how she may rule as a Supreme Court justice.
This is a real thing reported by a real newsroom.
“Revealed: Amy Coney Barrett lived in home of secretive Christian group’s co-founder,” reads the Guardian’s headline.
Oh, this is revealing, all right. Just not in the way the British tabloid thinks.
The story’s opening lines read, “Amy Coney Barrett lived in the home of one of the founders of the People of Praise while she was a law student, raising new questions about the Supreme Court nominee’s involvement with the secretive Christian faith group that has been criticized for dominating the lives of its members and subjugating women.”
It continues:
The revelation offers new clues about the possible influence of the People of Praise, and one of its leaders, on a woman who may shape the direction of the supreme court for the next 40 to 50 years. Barrett has said she is a “faithful Catholic” but that her religious beliefs would not “bear in the discharge of my duties as a judge”.
None of this, by the way, has anything to do with Barrett’s jurisprudence. The report is merely part of a larger, none-too-subtle attempt to paint the judge as a fundamentalist wackadoodle.
For its earth-shattering report on Barrett’s law school living situation, the Guardian sources public records and a speeding ticket that show her husband, Jesse, “apparently also lived in the home in the years before their 1999 marriage.”
“Amy Barrett, who as Amy Coney graduated from Notre Dame Law in 1997 at the top of her class, has said she met Jesse while she was in law school but has not offered other details,” the report reads. “Records show that other individuals who appear to be members of the People of Praise have also gotten married following periods of living in the Ranaghan household.”
This is the good stuff.
The Guardian even contacted Ranaghan’s wife, Dorothy, who politely declined to answer the outlet’s questions, though she did confirm Barrett lived in their home for a time.
“Let’s just say it was one of the better experiences of our life. She is just a gem. But I don’t feel comfortable talking right now,” said Dorothy Ranaghan.
She added in response to a question about whether they had been taking in students for long, “I just prefer not to talk about it, but yes, many years.”
And that is that. That is all the new material that the Guardian has to report on Barrett: that she lived in the home of someone connected to the People of Praise until she did not and that the homeowners confirmed the judge lived there once. The remainder of the article is just a recitation of previously reported tidbits about the People of Praise, with all the normal leering and innuendo that goes with it.
One can appreciate the Guardian’s effort to muckrake here, but it really should have held onto this one until it had some news to report.
