Pelosi says questions on Barrett's Catholicism off limits: 'Doesn’t matter what her faith is'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., cautioned her fellow Democrats in the other chamber of Congress against bringing up Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholicism during the judge’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing in the Senate.

Pelosi, who is a Catholic herself, argued that a person’s religious beliefs should not matter to the senators questioning the potential Supreme Court justice, but instead they should focus on Barrett’s views on the Constitution.

"I think it’s appropriate for people to ask her about how faithful she would be to the Constitution of the United States, whatever her faith,” Pelosi said Sunday during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It doesn’t matter what her faith is or what religion she believes in. What matters is, does she believe in the Constitution of the United States?"

Pelosi added: "Does she believe in the precedent on the Supreme Court that has upheld the Affordable Care Act? This is, again, directly related to a major concern of the American people, as it was in 2018. Health care, health care, health care. The three most important issues in this election.”

Barrett’s faith was already the subject of questions during her confirmation to the U. S. Court of Appeals, when Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested that the judge’s religious tenets could guide her thinking on the law.

“The conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein said.

Barrett responded that her views had evolved and that she agreed judges shouldn’t “follow their personal convictions in the decision of a case, rather than what the law requires.”

When Barrett’s name first arose in 2018 as a possible Supreme Court pick by President Trump, even some conservatives worried her sparse judicial record made it too hard to predict how she might rule. Nearly three years on, her judicial record now includes the authorship of around 100 opinions and several telling dissents in which Barrett displayed her ... (Read more)

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