Cafecito with Judge Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez: Capturing a Moment in American History

October 26, 2020 - San Antonio

By Jade Esteban Estrada, Cafecito Columnist, San Antonio Sentinel

When the Honorable Judge Rosie Speedlin Gonzalez appears on my screen, she’s in her office at the Bexar County Courthouse. It's Wednesday, the day before Judge Amy Coney Barrett is expected to be voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on an unobstructed path to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

After watching all four days of Barrett's confirmation hearings, I'm ready to hear Speedlin Gonzalez's expert take on this American moment. 

“If confirmed, she will be the fifth woman to sit on the Supreme Court as a justice,” she says of Barrett, a circuit court judge and legal scholar.

“Now, I’ve seen some comments online saying, ‘Oh, she’s only been a judge for a year and a half. She has no judicial experience.’ Well, [Justice] Elena Kagan never sat as a judge before she was confirmed as justice for the Supreme Court,” she says. “Those details get lost in the vitriol.”

The purpose of the hearings, she explains, is to make sure that the president's nominee “has the integrity to stand up to the vote in the Senate."

Made up of Senate Democrats and Republicans, the committee is truly diverse. Each senator interviewed Barrett in a variety of creative and, at times, mind-boggling ways, and there were no shortage of fiery speeches.

Because the Senate vote to confirm Barrett is happening just over a week before Election Day, her nomination has been controversial. Politics aside, Speedlin Gonzalez feels that Barrett’s confirmation would be a win for women.

“Now, is it a win for certain types of women and a loss for another type of woman? I mean, that’s the argument, right?" Speedlin Gonzalez asks, in a lawyerly way.

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As Barrett is pro-life and a devout Catholic, her confirmation to the highest court would lock in a 6-3 conservative majority. Senate Democrats are particularly concerned about her vote in the upcoming California vs. Texas case, which could dismantle the Affordable Care Act. From the onset, Democrats were disturbed by this nomination because President Donald J. Trump has promised his supporters that he would repeal and replace Obamacare via a conservative judicial pick. Additionally, there is also concern that her vote would affect women’s health if Roe vs. Wade was to make its way up to the Supreme Court.

"Traditionally, judges and justices ethically would have to recuse themselves from any subject matter that could come before the court in which they have had a strong opinion [that has been] published or [if they’ve] made public statements about it," Speedlin Gonzalez explains.

Indeed, Barrett’s past written positions have been under scrutiny throughout the nomination process.  

“We’ll just have to wait and see if she’s going to recuse herself with the justices,” she says. “And we’ll never know - if she’s recusing herself - why she’s recused herself, you know? If she doesn’t recuse herself, I’m sure there will be a lot of clamor about how she can sit in judgment and hear a case when her opinion is very well known.” 

I ask her what she thought of last week’s hearings. 

“For me, it was a lot of political bluster and spectacle," she says. "The party that’s in power will ride this cart to the market."

I crack an involuntary smile. I haven't heard that one before.

“The Republican Party’s in power,” she continues, matter-of-factly. “They have the votes to confirm regardless of all the noise and all the complaints made by Democrat senators. It’s going to go through by simple numbers.”

When I ask her what she would say to Americans who feel unsettled by Barrett’s rushed appointment, she directs me to the bigger picture.

“Vote, [for] one,” she says. “The whole process really rides on who we elect to sit in those Senate seats. We have Senator [John] Cornyn and Senator [Ted] Cruz as Texas representatives in the Senate.” 

She tells me to watch how they vote tomorrow. 

“Most likely, they will vote to confirm the new justice,” she says. “If you don’t like that they confirm her as the new justice, then you have the power of the vote, to object and vote [the senators] out and elect someone who you believe represents you better.”

Cornyn is currently in a competitive race against Democrat MJ Hegar.

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Though some pundits are calling this the most important election in modern history, there are some people who are choosing not to vote. I ask her what she would say to them.

“To not vote is to allow someone else to have that power over you," she says calmly, but with passion. "It’s allowing someone to smudge you out as if you don’t exist, while they do. So vote! That’s what I would say."

After Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation hearings, I feel I should ask this: Did you think the judiciary committee hearings were fair for Judge Barrett?

“Well, that’s relative, right?” she replies. “If you ask [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell, it was the most fair hearing. [But] if you ask someone like [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, she might say that it was a sham. They have a process. The process was applied. From a technical standpoint, the process was fair. The president nominates, [the Senate] has hearings, and the nominee will be required to sit with just a simple majority."

From a political standpoint, however, the level of fairness could be argued.

"You’ll hear some [Democrats] say ‘But, you didn’t let us do that four years ago,’ and ‘It’s so unfair! We trusted you!’ Well,” she says, leaning into the screen slightly, “any savvy politician knows that you have to be really careful who you trust; who your bedfellows are. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Those are just some of the golden rules that are involved in an area of our society that creates policy, makes laws, passes judgment, and issues executive orders. That’s our country, right? The three branches of government, the executive, the legislative and the judicial. So it’s all part of this big process of how we, as a free country, rule ourselves."

Barrett’s confirmation makes me think about Judge Merrick Garland's ill-fated nomination.

“Timing is everything,” she says, without missing a beat. "Who knows? Maybe Judge Garland will get renominated by someone else in the future."

During the hearings, there was an LGBTQ moment that stood out to me. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) was asking Barrett about LGBTQ protections, and, in response, she used the term “sexual preference.” Later in the day, Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told her that the term was not only outdated, but that it was also offensive, because it suggested that an individual had a choice about being an LGBTQ person. I ask her what she thought of that interaction.

“I think what we saw unfold, very publicly during the hearing, was an aspect of religion vs. science,” she says. “I believe that certain religions believe that people of my ilk, have a choice: [We] can choose to be heterosexual and follow the teaching of their god, or we can choose to be LGBT and follow the teachings of our god. And that’s just if you’re even a God-believing person. I have very close friends who are atheists, and they are salt-of-the-earth people; some of the best people I’ve ever met. I think that it’s very telling to hear her describe the LGBT community as folks who have a ‘preference’ to live a certain lifestyle.”

What do you remember most about Justice Ginsburg? 

“She was a firecracker,” she says with reverence. “She was a very wise woman...very diplomatic in how she delivered her lectures. In her talks, she was very empathic. She will be missed.”

She shares a story about the late justice.

“Ruth Ginsburg once described changing the word 'sex' to 'gender' [in one of her briefs] because she paid attention to her assistant who said, 'The minute people start reading your briefs, and the word sex comes up, their mind will leave that brief and only think of sex. But, if you change the word to gender, then you keep them engaged - and you need for them to pay attention to gender.'”

That's so true. 

Speedlin Gonzalez feels that all the women who have been appointed to the Supreme Court have brought something unique to the bench.

“They have had to overcome huge obstacles, starting with the gender they were born with,” she says. "I had the privilege of actually sitting down with two of these justices at two very different times.”

About ten years ago, Speedlin Gonzalez sat next to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at a luncheon during the Hispanic National Bar Association’s annual conference in Minneapolis. During the conversation, O’Connor told her that she believed that society, as we know it today, was going to be detrimentally impacted for two reasons. The first reason was because P.E. had been taken out of schools.

"She said, 'Children need the opportunity to take a break from academics during the day and get a little crazy on the playground, [to] get all that energy out. They need to learn how to socialize, not from a desk, but real-people interaction with their classmates.”

The second reason for this downward spiral would be because schools had eliminated civics classes. 

“She said, ‘How is anyone going to know how to be a good citizen, and [learn] about how important it is to follow the rules, follow the law, and how to learn how to self-govern?'"

She went on to say that civics class was also where students learned about the importance of voting, how Congress worked, and what they needed to do to make a change at the various levels of government.

"It was a great discussion,” she says, glowing with the memory.

A few years later, Speedlin Gonzalez met Justice Sonia Sotomayor at another HNBA function.

"I was a commissioner on the Commission of the Status of Latinas in the Legal Profession, and she invited us to meet with her in her chambers at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington,” she says. “It was such a pleasure to meet her and talk to her.”

Speedlin Gonzalez even brought the justice a gift.

“We all knew that she liked dangly earrings and a local jewelry maker made her some beautiful silver earrings,” she says. “In front of everyone, Justice Sotomayor took off the earrings she was wearing and put on the earrings I gave her from this artist.”

Wow!

“Wait! she says with enthusiasm. “It goes one step further! There was a group of Latina women, locally, who found out where I was going and that I was going to meet with her. Gloria Ramirez Uribe, who is part of this group, said, ‘We have something that we want you to give to the justice. We learned that she likes to go out dancing and we want her to know that we think about her.’ It was a red silk rebozo...a wrap.” 

That’s an awesome story. 

“So those are memories that will never escape me. I feel very privileged,” she says, adding that she wishes she could have also met Ginsburg. “Maybe one day I’ll meet Justice Kagan, and maybe one day I’ll meet Justice Barrett, who I think will inevitably be confirmed.”

During the hearings, stare decisis is a term that was used in regard to Brown vs. The Board of Education and other landmark rulings.

“And I heard the term ‘super precedent’ as well,” she says with a smile.

I ask her to explain stare decisis.

“It’s what we’re taught in law school, which is, once it’s decided, there’s no need to decide it further, especially if it’s coming from the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s the law of the land."

She says it’s not often that the Supreme Court will overturn a decision, but she gives me a few examples of the times it has been done. 

“Some people believe that the constitution is a static, concrete document while others believe that it has life, and it breathes, and expands, and cuts back and molds to the needs of our society: the first democratic society of its kind ever in the world,” she says. “We’re a young, young country. We’re not even 300 years old. We are still this great American experiment.”

An experiment that still struggles with racism, violence, and now, a growing health crisis. 

“We’ve become so polarized and everyone has their own opinions, [but] that’s the great thing about America; we have the right to free speech,” she says. “We have the freedom of association.” 

She sits back in her chair. “Time will tell if we’re able to come back to being civil to each other, and being able to say, ‘We can agree to disagree. Let’s go get a beer,’ you know?”

By a 52-48 vote, Barrett was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in as an associate justice to the United States Supreme Court late Monday night.

Here’s to civility, and to a new chapter in the history of these United States.

Jade Esteban Estrada is the Cafecito Columnist for the San Antonio Sentinel. He can be reached at jade@sasentinel.com.