WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats plan to boycott the Judiciary Committee’s scheduled vote Thursday on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, The Washington Post reported.
“We will not grant this process any further legitimacy by participating in a committee markup of this nomination just 12 days before the culmination of an election that is already underway,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York said in a statement Wednesday.
The 22-member committee is expected to vote on Barrett’s nomination, and support for her to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the nation’s high court was expected to pass on a party-line vote, according to the Post.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, has said the full Senate would vote on Monday to confirm Barrett to the Supreme Court.
Democrats said they planned to fill the 10 vacant committee seats on Thursday with photographs of people impacted by the Affordable Care Act, CNN reported. The gesture was tied to the law, which is scheduled to be on the Supreme Court docket the week after Election Day.
Barrett, 48, an appellate court judge who has spoken out against abortion and a court ruling on the Affordable Care Act, is on track to lock in a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court for many years, according to The Associated Press.
“There is no precedent in (the) history of the Senate for confirming a Supreme Court justice this close to an election,” Schumer said in his statement. “The truth is that the Republican majority is perpetrating the most rushed, most partisan, least legitimate process in the long history of Supreme Court nominations."