Sen. Kamala Harris on opposing Judge Kavanaugh

California Senator Kamala Harris will vote against Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, and she will not change her mind.

“A tiger can always change its stripes. But when we’re looking at Kavanaugh, we have to look at his long record and his writings. They suggest that this individual is not likely to change,” Sen. Harris told KCRW’s Press Play.

Soon after Kavanaugh’s nomination, Sen. Harris tweeted that the judge represented “a direct and fundamental threat to the rights and health care of hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Judge Kavanaugh has praised the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist for dissenting in the Roe v. Wade case. Senator Harris voiced concern that Kavanaugh will overturn Roe v. Wade or render it irrelevant, based on the judge’s past opinions and his support of Rehnquist’s belief in originalism.

In a 2017 case, Kavanaugh decided against permitting a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant to seek an abortion. The court overturned his decision. “There’s a lot, in terms of his background, that should cause all of us concern,” Sen. Harris said.

A Yale Law School graduate, Judge Kavanaugh teaches at Harvard Law School and has spent 12 years as a judge on the D.C. circuit. But Sen. Harris asserted that whether or not someone is qualified to serve on the Supreme Court depends not on the quality of their degree, but how they use it.

“Don’t forget that, at its worst moments, the United States Supreme Court upheld racial segregation; upheld voter suppression; equated people with corporations,” she said.

“The standard has to be a reflection of the ideals of who we are as a country – in particular, notions of justice, equality, fairness.”