Trump's New Supreme Court Justice Just Voted in Favor of Government Funding of Planned Parenthood

Brett Kavanaugh, constitutional technocrat

As I pointed out during the Senate hearing for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and after, it is a mistake to hail the appointment of Kavanaugh as an achievement of President Trump.

I wrote for example (my bold here):

There is no way we know what these two appointments mean [Kavanugh and Neil Gorsuch]. Both nominees are what I consider constitutional technocrats. That is they do not put liberty above all but rather their technocratic interpretations of the Constitution, which curiously enough seem always to fall in line with the desires of the Deep State...

In short, supporting these two choices is a type of Constitutional roulette.  Something may come up on the Court's docket where they will rule in favor of liberty, But on important issues, that are likely to come before the Court, such as privacy and government surveillance or the willingness to support Congressional experimentation with social policy, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch are all too clear that they will be horrific....

Shouldn't we in our support of Supreme Court nominees adopt the medical principle of primum non nocere before cheering them on? In the case of Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, if the right (wrong?) cases come before the Supreme Court our liberties will be clipped and cause harm, possibly very severe.

 Kavanaugh just proved my argument in a remarkable Supreme Court case.

Nate Madden reports:

Kavanaugh and Roberts join with SCOTUS' liberal wing to deny a PP [Planned Parenthood] defunding case. 

Where exactly in the Constitution, never mind from a libertarian perspective, can Kavanaugh find reasoning to justify government financial support of Planned Parenthood?

In a dissent, Judge Clarence Thomas gets to the heart of the matter:

So what explains the Court’s refusal to do its job here? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named "Planned Parenthood." That makes the Court's  decision particularly troubling since the case has nothing to do with abortion.

Just 64 days after taking the oath to become a justice of the Supreme Court, the Constitutional roulette chamber has spun and blown away libertarian supporters of this Trump choice.

Vox explains the matter:

By denying certiorari in Gee v. Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast and Andersen v. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, the Court let stand lower court rulings that states cannot ban Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid reimbursements when the group treats low-income patients. A number of states had sought to institute such bans in recent years.

In other words, Kavanaugh did not rule in a manner that would start to shrink government but he ruled in exactly the opposite direction, allowing more expansion of Medicaid payments. This means he ruled either as a technocrat, which I warned about, or in line with the general desire of the Deep State to see government's tentacles expanded--or both.

I expect more of this out of Kavanaugh. Indeed, in this first act, it appears that Kavanaugh may well be worse than Gorsuch.

-RW