MAGA Attacks Amy Coney Barrett for Siding With Liberal Justices: 'Disaster'

Supporters of former President Donald Trump have attacked Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett for siding with liberal justices in an Arizona voting rights case.

The High Court issued a 5-4 order in response to an emergency appeal filed by the Republican National Committee that sought to give full effect to voting measures enacted after President Joe Biden narrowly won Arizona, a closely contested swing state, in the 2020 election.

The court granted part of the request, allowing the enforcement of restrictions that bar people from voting in state and local elections if they don't provide proof of citizenship when they register to vote. But it rejected other parts of the request that would have blocked more than 40,000 registered voters from casting a ballot in November's presidential election.

The order said conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch would have allowed the law to be fully enforced, while Barrett would have joined with the court's three liberal justices to fully deny the request—prompting Trump-supporting social media users to call her a "massive disappointment" and a "liberal in conservative clothing."

Barrett, who cemented the High Court's 6-3 conservative supermajority when Trump appointed her in 2020, has shown a willingness to break ranks with her fellow conservatives. She has also clashed with Thomas, the court's most conservative justice, over how history should be used to decide modern legal issues.

On X, formerly Twitter, Trump supporters were outraged by her decision in the Arizona case.

"What the hell is wrong with Amy Coney Barrett? She voted with the liberals on the court to block a requirement for proof of citizenship in AZ to vote! She's a disaster!" wrote Bill Mitchell, the host of YourVoice America.

The anonymous social media account @catturd2 wrote, "Amy Commie Barrett strikes again."

"Amy Coney Barret again siding with the liberals," another user added. "What a mistake it was to nominate her."

But Barrett is "precisely the justice that some of us thought she would become at the time of her confirmation," Jonathan Turley, a conservative legal analyst and professor at George Washington University's law school, told Newsweek.

She has always shown herself to be an "independent thinker who is willing to go wherever her principles take her," he said, adding: "As I wrote during her confirmation, Democrats were dead wrong about her in their relentless attacks and that she was not nearly the ideologue that they stereotyped in the hearings.

"It did not matter. Legal experts insisted that she was 'the most conservative nominee since Clarence Thomas' and portrayed her as a robotic addition to the court."

Turley said Barrett's writings "show that she has thought deeply about these issues and had the courage of her convictions. I have disagreed with her at times on the court, but I have greatly respected her penetrating questions in oral argument and her independence in ruling on cases."