Amy Coney Barrett Health Policies: How Her Confirmation Might Affect Your Health

In her professional career, Barrett says she holds the same judicial philosophy as Scalia, who dissented in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruling that ruled same-sex marriage is guaranteed by the Constitution. In a lecture she gave as a Notre Dame law professor in 2016, Barrett defended the Obergefell dissenters. She said that Title IX protections for transgender Americans were a “strain on the text” and suggested that laws on marriage equality should be left to state legislatures, not the courts. The case’s plaintiff and defendant, Jim Obergefell, called Barrett’s confirmation a “human rights emergency” in an October opinion piece in The Washington Post. During her Senate Supreme Court nomination hearings, Barrett declined to say whether she agreed with the Obergefell decision. “I don’t think that anybody should assume that just because Justice Scalia decided a decision a certain way that I would too,” she said.

Several important LGBTQ+ cases will soon come before the Court, including Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. The case, which is scheduled to be heard on November 4, seeks to allow private agencies that receive taxpayer funds to provide services, such as foster care providers and homeless shelters, to deny services to LGBTQ+ people based on religious objections. A number of other cases are winding their way through the courts that could put LGBTQ+ rights at risk, including nondiscrimination laws protecting transgender students and health care protections for transgender patients. There is some hope for the LGBTQ+ community, however, as both Justice Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice Roberts joined Ginsburg this past June in 6-to-3 rulings for Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga., Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which applied the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

On disabilities

In a letter to Senate leaders this October, dozens of disability advocacy groups objected to Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The groups noted that Barrett seems primed to overturn Obamacare, which could be disastrous for the 28.9 percent of families who have at least one disabled family member, according to census data. The ACA has supported people with disabilities through its protections for preexisting conditions, Medicaid expansion, coverage of mental health services, habilitation services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and protections against disability discrimination, the letter notes.

Earlier this year in a ruling as a circuit judge, Barrett dissented against the decision in Wolf v. Cook County, which banned a recent Homeland Security rule that made it more difficult for immigrants with disabilities to come to the U.S. or become permanent residents by considering them a “public charge.” The majority opinion said that the rule violated the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which makes it illegal for federally-funded programs to discriminate based on disabilities, concluding that it “penalizes…[and] disproportionately burdens disabled people.” Barrett also…