Nicole Berner, nominated by President Joe Biden, was confirmed last month for a seat on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. While much attention has been paid to her personal background, less attention has been paid to her professional history… as a litigator for Planned Parenthood.
Berner’s confirmation has been widely applauded as history-making, as she is openly gay. Since 2006, she worked as general counsel for Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Yet she also worked as a staff attorney for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion chain, having previously argued in favor of mifepristone — one of the pills used in chemical abortions — being made more widely available, and against restrictions on eugenic abortions in Missouri.
Furthermore, Berner’s wife, Debra Katz, is also a lawyer; Katz has represented abortionists as well as Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school.
Planned Parenthood quickly congratulated Berner on the nomination, with Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson saying she “looks forward” to Berner’s time on the court. And it’s no wonder why; is there any real question as to how Berner will likely rule on abortion-related cases? It’s part of a Planned Parenthood-backed scheme, after all, called the “Blueprint Appointments Project (BAP),” which has a goal of placing abortion activists in government positions.
Double standard?
Yet compare Berner’s nomination to that of Amy Coney Barrett’s. Though Barrett is now a Supreme Court Justice, her nominations to various courts were fraught with controversy. When she was nominated to the Circuit Court in 2017, Dianne Feinstein notably criticized her for being too Catholic. “Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that — you know, dogma and law are two different things,” Feinstein said. “And I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different. And I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.”
Similar questions were raised for Brian Buescher, a district court judge in Nebraska. Buescher is likewise Catholic, and a member of the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal group within the Church. Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono both argued this should disqualify him from public service, asking if he would resign his membership from the Knights of Columbus or recuse himself from any abortion-related case.
Would Harris or Hirono ask Berner to recuse herself from an abortion-related case? She has just as much of a bias on the issue as Barrett and Buescher, if not arguably more. But suddenly, when a judge is pro-abortion, their history and bias no longer seems to matter.
