That’s why one had to chuckle when U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, D-CA, asked him about a case more than a century old. This one involved the constitutionality of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Watch this four minute video to look at how Kavanugh refused to answer almost any question from Harris, including the one about the Chinese Exclusion Act, known by legal scholars as Chae Chan Ping v. United States.
“In the 1889 Chinese Exclusion case, the Supreme Court permitted a ban on Chinese people entering the United States. The court said Chinese people are quote impossible to assimilate with our people unquote and said they were immigrating in numbers quote approaching an invasion. This case has never been explicitly overruled. Can you tell me was the United States Supreme Court correct in holding that Chinese people could be banned from entering our country,” asked Harris, an Indian American lawmaker.
Kavanaugh acknowledged the ruling reflected discriminatory attitudes of the times. It was a simple yes or no answer, yet Kavanaugh hemmed and hawed.
“Senator, I don’t want to opine on this particular case without looking at it or studying the discrimination,” he finally answered.
What a copout!
The question is why wouldn't Kavanaugh want to repudiate an obviously racist decision (that is at least as awful as Plessey v. Ferguson) that remains a stain on the Supreme Court to this day?
Here’s the reason. The Chae Chan Ping case is still an important precedent that has been and continues to be relied on by the government and the Supreme Court to uphold the power of the President to keep out foreigners whenever he wants to and for whatever reason. It is the whole basis for the Muslim Travel Ban and the gestapo-like tactics of ICE and border agents in separating families, arresting law-abiding immigrants and refugees at courthouses, schools and places of work and detaining asylum seekers and refugees for as long as they want.
For most people, whether discrimination is good or bad is a cut and dry response.
Apparently not for everyone.
Additional reporting by Views From the Edge.
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