Supreme Court Justice jokes that she’ll move to New Zealand if Trump wins
Pro-LGBT Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has joked that she might move to New Zealand if Donald Trump becomes President.
Ginsburg is one of the most pro-gay justices on the US Supreme Court and a consistent voice in favour of equality, performing numerous same-sex weddings herself.
The 83-year-old liberal stalwart spoke out in a rare interview with the New York Times.
She said: “I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president.
“For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”
The next President will be responsible for filling at least one vacancy on the court due to the death of Antonin Scalia, while 79-year-old Anthony Kennedy and Ginsburg both may opt to retire.
Trump has previously released a shortlist of ultra-conservative candidates he would consider for the court – the majority of whom are strongly anti-LGBT and opposed the equal marriage ruling.
Speculating on what her late husband Martin D Ginsburg would have said, the justice joked: “Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand”.
The gay icon might not relish the possibility of working with Trump’s preferred candidate, Texas justice William H Pryor Jr, for the vacant spot on the US Supreme Court.
Pryor has previously attracted attention for being one of the most virulently anti-LGBT justices in America – having argued in a 2003 brief that Texas should be allowed to keep its sodomy law.
He argued in 2003: “[There is] no fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy just because it is done behind closed doors.
“Homosexual sodomy has not historically been recognized in this country as a right — to the contrary, it has historically been recognized as a wrong — it is not a fundamental right.”
He added: “Texas is hardly alone in concluding that homosexual sodomy may have severe physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual consequences, which do not necessarily attend heterosexual sodomy, and from which Texas’s citizens need to be protected.”
