A leading conservative voice on judicial nominees rejected the suggestion of impeaching Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Friday, saying that while she was disappointed in some of his decision-making, ousting him wasn’t going to happen.
“I can’t remember the last time a judge was impeached,” Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network, said on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program Friday.
She called any attempt “not realistic.”
A debate over the chief justice broke out online Thursday after he sided with the court’s four Democratic appointees to halt President Trump’s push to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp said Chief Justice Roberts showed he was not the conservative-minded jurist he’d been touted to be.
Ms. Severino said the same complaints were leveled at the chief justice in 2012, when he issued the key ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans had challenged as unconstitutional.
“People were frustrated because they saw that as a pattern. I think this is why it is so important to stick with judges like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh,” said Ms. Severino, whose organization supported Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, Mr. Trump’s two high-court picks, during their confirmation hearings.
In his legal opinion Thursday the chief justice said that while asking about citizenship on the census is legal in theory, he didn’t believe the justification the administration gave for why it wanted to add the question back in to the 2020 count.
Four other GOP appointees disagreed with the chief justice, who was named to the high court by President George W. Bush in 2005.
The only time a Supreme Court justice was impeached was in 1805.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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