Supreme Court confirmation fight going on in Raleigh as well as Washington

As the Senate Judiciary Committee opened its confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, lawmakers and advocates on both sides of the confirmation fight held news conferences in Raleigh all day Monday to get their competing messages out.

Each side accused the other of playing politics with a process that's supposed to be above that.

"Several of my colleagues have engaged in extreme hyperbole and described Judge Barrett’s nomination as an end to health care, abortion rights, labor rights, and the list goes on and on and on," said Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, a member of the Judiciary Committee. "My Democratic friends decry the idea that a nominee has a predetermined outcome in mind while, in the same breath, demanding the nominee agree to their preferred outcome of a case. The hypocrisy is incredible."

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein said Barrett was nominated because she’s likely to vote to throw out the Affordable Care Act in a case that will come before the Supreme Court next month. He said access to health care is what’s at stake. Stein is one of 21 Democratic attorneys general who will defend the law in court.

"If you’re one of the 4 million North Carolinians who have a pre-existing condition, the protections you have against discrimination by insurance companies are gone," he said of the possibility the court could rule the decade-old health care law unconstitutional. "If you’re one of nearly a million North Carolinians who have health insurance because you could not otherwise afford it, you will lose that health insurance."

Republican 8th District Congressman Richard Hudson dismissed that argument, saying Republicans will replace the ACA with another health care law that will also cover pre-existing conditions. President Donald Trump has the authority to nominate Barrett, despite the election already being underway, Hudson said, and the Senate should confirm her as quickly as possible.

"Democrats are getting desperate and putting politics ahead of the Constitution. They’re trying to delay Judge Barrett’s hearing," he said. "There’s no reason this hearing should not move forward."

But Rep. Darren Jackson, D-Wake, noted that the Trump administration has been trying to kill the ACA for four years – and other GOP officials for even longer.

"The Trump administration is working right now to strike it down in court with their hand-picked judges," said Jackson, the top Democrat in the state House. "That would leave millions of North Carolinians vulnerable without health insurance in the middle of this pandemic."

Caroline Fisher, of Wilmington, said she and her husband couldn’t have started their business if they hadn't been able to get affordable family health insurance through the ACA. Without the protections of the ACA, she said, her pre-existing condition would make her uninsurable.

"Repealing the ACA doesn't make economic sense, and it doesn't make moral sense," Fisher said. "To get rid of affordable health care for millions of small-business owners would cripple our economy at a time when small businesses are working hard to stay afloat, and we are all doing our best to stay healthy in the face of a global pandemic."

Michael Whatley, chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, was a law school classmate of Barrett's and said she will make an excellent Supreme Court justice.

"We feel very strongly in North Carolina that this needs to move forward. We strongly back Thom TIllis in the role that he’s going to play on this," Whatley said.