Saturday 25 June 2022 02:30 AM Susan Collins and Joe Manchin say Kavanaugh and Gorsuch MISLED them trends now
U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Joe Manchin slammed Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch for their votes in overturning Roe V. Wade on Friday.
The senators had voted to confirm the Donald Trump appointed justices despite fears that they would overtrun the landmark abortion ruling, with the senators saying at the time that they trusted Kavanaugh and Gorsuch to uphold the law.
Now Collins, a Republican, and Manchin, a Democrat, are accusing the justices of misleading them as they criticized the court's 6-3 ruling to end women's federal right to an abortion.
'This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon,' Collins said in a statement.
Manchin echoed the outrage, saying: 'I trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v. Wade was settled legal precedent and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans.'
U.S. Senators Susan Collins (left) and Joe Manchin (right) criticized Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch for their votes in overturning Roe V. Wade after previously claiming it was settled law during their confirmation hearings
Kavanaugh (left) and Neil Gorsuch (right) were among the six conservative justices to vote to end American's fedreal right to abortions on Friday
During his confirmation hearings in 2018, many believed Kavanaugh would oppose Roe V. Wade, but the justice said he stood behind the decision, which he repeated to Collins in a one-on-one meeting about his stances and beliefs (pictured)
The fate of Roe V. Wade had long-been on the nation's mind when Trump appointed Gorsuch in 2017 and Kavanaugh a year later.
Liberals feared that the conservative-leaning justices would act to overturn Roe v. Wade if given a chance, but both men said in their confirmation hearings that the landmark ruling was settled law.
'Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, is a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court,' Gorsuch told senators in 2017. 'It has been reaffirmed.
'So a good judge will consider it as precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other.'
Kavanaugh failed to publicly answer if he beleived Roe v. Wade was 'correct law,' but doubled down that it was not only settled, but reinforced by the court's 1992 Casey V. Planned Parenthood, which upheld the federal right to an abortion.
'So Casey now becomes a precedent on precedent,' Kavanaugh said in 2018. 'It is not as if it is just a run-of-the-mill case that was decided and never been reconsidered, but Casey specifically reconsidered it, applied the stare decisis factors, and decided to reaffirm it.'
Collins said Kavanaugh echoed his statements to her in a one-on-one interview in 2018.
'We talked about whether he considered Roe to be settled law,' Collins said back then. 'He said he agreed with what Justice [John] Roberts said in his nomination hearing, in which he said that it was settled law.
'We had a very good, thorough discussion about that issue and many others.'
Last month,
