Neomi Rao, probably watching Donald Trump throw Little People. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Confirmation hearings took place this week for Neomi Rao, Donald Trump’s pick to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit.
Rao, a former Clarence Thomas clerk, is a “modern” Republican. And by “modern,” I mean she embodies all of the retrograde views on race and gender that have come to define Donald Trump’s Republican Party. Rape, yeah, it’s really on the women to not put themselves in that situation. Title IX? We need to make things more difficult for victims of sexual assault. Brown v. Board of Ed.? From The Slot:
Rao recognized that the Supreme Court’s decision to desegregate schools in Brown v. The Board of Education set “a really important precedent of the Supreme Court,” but when pressed by Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, she refused to say whether the decision was correct or not.
I mean, these are Republicans these days. The party of limited government and judicial restraint is dead. In its place we have a party deeply committed to rolling back the very notion of equal protection, unless they find some way to argue that a white man has not been equally protected. It’s horrifying, but until people stop voting for Republicans, these are the Republicans we’ll get. Nothing about Rao is that outside the mainstream of what Republicans now think, and that says a lot about how far to the right the party has lurched since the turn of the century.
Rao’s just a normal, dwarf-tossing, Fed Soc person. Wait… what did I just write? Rao supports dwarf-tossing? From Mother Jones:
Add to that list Neomi Rao, Trump’s nominee to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the powerful DC Circuit, who has written at least two law review articles and a blog post in which she defended dwarf-tossing.
Especially popular in Florida bars, dwarf-tossing is the strange spectacle in which competitors throw Velcro-clad little people at a wall or mattress like a shotput. The longest toss wins. The sport has been banned in some American states and parts of France, where a judge upheld such bans because of “considerations of human dignity.” Rao considers these laws an affront to individual liberty that fails to recognize the right of the dwarf to be tossed. In one article, she wrote that the decision in France upholding the dwarf-tossing ban was an example of “dignity as coercion” and that it “demonstrates how concepts of dignity can be used to coerce individuals by forcing upon them a particular understanding of dignity.”
I can’t… like… HOW CAN WE HAVE A SOCIETY WITH THESE PEOPLE? How am I supposed to pretend that I can find common human ground with a person who thinks tossing a little person cocooned in Velcro is a constitutionally protected right? Is there a pro-Mandingo fighting note just waiting to bust out of Rao’s flash drive as well? WHO DEFENDS DWARF-TOSSING AS A CONSTITUTIONAL MATTER?
And… AND… this is not some idle thought-fart from Rao. She uses dwarf-tossing — which, again, is THROWING LITTLE PEOPLE A DISTANCE FOR SPORT — as a way to explain why people should not be “coerced” into treating gays and lesbians with basic human dignity. Dwarf-tossing is the GATEWAY DRUG to a larger disrespect for the LGBT community:
Dwarf-tossing is an odd cause for a federal judicial nominee to champion. Even weirder, Rao has invoked it repeatedly in her writing to make the case that a misguided focus on human dignity is leading US courts to run afoul of the Constitution in decisions that advance LGBT rights and racial equality. These are areas of the law where, she argues, judges are letting the pernicious influence of international human rights law creep into their jurisprudence at the expense of American exceptionalism and personal freedom.
SHE’S GONNA GET CONFIRMED, FOLKS. She’s not overtly racist enough to engage with Tim Scott’s selective sight, nor openly rape-y enough to lose the support of GOP women. She’s just a “normal” Republican. She thinks that if a woman didn’t want to be raped, she shouldn’t have worn that. She thinks that if a gay person wants human rights, they shouldn’t have kissed each other. And that if a little person didn’t want to be tossed they shouldn’t have been so little.
Neomi Rao is 45 years old. We are so, totally, screwed.
Trump’s Nominee to Replace Kavanaugh Is a Staunch Defender of Dwarf-Tossing [Mother Jones]
Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.
Retrograde Kavanaugh Replacement Supports… Dwarf-Tossing? Really? curated from Above the Law
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