Joint Statement of Youth and Student Organizations on the Nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme

For Immediate Release
January 5, 2005

Contact: Daniella Gibbs Leger
202-682-1611

 
President Bush has nominated Samuel Alito, a judge with a long record of judicial extremism, to replace Sandra Day O’Connor, who has been the crucial swing vote on the Supreme Court. If Judge Alito is confirmed, his extreme right-wing ideology could endanger our basic freedoms.

Judge Alito’s record shows that he will side with powerful interests and institutions over individuals and their rights. He will side with big business and polluters against workers and our environment. He will undermine protections of our privacy, civil rights and public safety. As a study of Alito’s opinions by Yale law students and professors found, Judge Alito “rules in favor of institutional actors and defers to agency decisions in many settings while showing skepticism toward individual litigants’ claims.” And, as a lawyer in the Reagan administration, Judge Alito wrote that he was “particularly proud” of his “contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued . . . that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.”

As young people, we have a special stake in this debate. We could feel the consequences of a Justice Alito on the Supreme Court not just in the next few years, but for fifty years or more. Today, we are joining together to make our diverse voices heard.

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