Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), issued the following statement after the Senate’s vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court:
“Today’s vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court comes at the end of a process that has made a mockery of the Senate’s obligation to provide ‘advice and consent’ for Supreme Court nominees, as our Constitution requires. And it begins an era in which the integrity and impartiality of the Supreme Court will be open to question, an era that will last at least as long as Brett Kavanaugh’s tenure as a Justice.
“Millions of Americans today see that there are two Americas – one in which ordinary people seeking elevation are held to a high standard of conduct that demands self-control, truthfulness, and transparency, and another reserved for those at the highest levels of the legal profession, whose position insulates them from meeting these same standards. And sadly, millions of sexual assault survivors fear that they must remain silent about the abuse and trauma they have suffered. These are grievous blows to our democracy, blows that could have been avoided if Senate Republicans had chosen to put country before party in the conduct of this confirmation process. Sadly, they made the opposite choice.
“Now that Judge Kavanaugh will become an Associate Justice on the Court, we must face with courage and determination the challenges ahead. We will continue to pursue racial justice and equality. We will continue to demand that our legal system honor the words etched into the edifice of the United States Supreme Court: equal justice under the law. Confronting a more firmly entrenched conservative Supreme Court means that we must be more strategic, more aggressive, and even more uncompromising in our demand for justice and equality.
“The tradition of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund is to fight against all odds and to prevail despite the forces set against equality and justice. We work on behalf of those who are most marginalized, those who, despite the injustices they have suffered, are prepared to fight within our justice system with dignity, determination, and integrity. On their behalf, we will continue our work with meticulous and unrelenting resolve in the fight for racial equality and justice.”
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Founded in 1940, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is the nation’s first civil and human rights law organization and has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or LDF.
