Booker suggests Kavanaugh has used racially coded language.
Kavanaugh: I'm very aware of the reality and perception of targeted policing. Or I try as best I can to be aware.
Wesby held that police were immune for suit for false arrest.
Booker: This is what I'm hearing. You're going to be a judge on the Supreme Court if confirmed. These are real issues. You refused to answer if Fisher was rightly decided, you refused to answer. I asked about diversity, you refused to answer.
Booker: The cases I raise are about addressing documented, systematic discrimination. I have a trouble understanding in your eyes how American could be just a few years away from being one race in the eyes of the law.
Booker: The Supreme Court plays a vital role in this work, just as it did in generations past in cases like Brown. I want to move now to voting rights..
Booker: Many consider voter ID laws as the modern day equivalent of poll taxes.
Booker: You wrote an opinion about voter ID law in which you said you were proud of the decision.
Booker: You were aware based on evidence in that case that voters of color were less likely than white voters to have id. How could you have concluded that the law would not have a desperate impact on minority voters?
Kavanaugh: The decision was unanimous.
Booker: Couldn't you see?
Booker: You said you were proud of the reasonable impediment provision.
Booker getting into details of the law. Now there's a sign that was in polling places in South Carolina. It's confusing and intimidating.
Booker: Doesn't it matter that average voter seeing this poster could be intimidated by this?
Kavanaugh: That's why I wrote that what sounds good on paper could fall apart in practice.
Booker: I appreciate that. But this is the result.
Booker: Someone in the greatest generation, 92-yr veteran and pastor, in his attempt to get a photo ID, he had to chase down high school records and other efforts. And still he couldn't get a valid photo ID.
Booker: Do you know what the poll tax was in South Carolina?
Booker: It was $1. In today's dollars, it was still less than the efforts of the pastor just mentioned.
Booker: I don't know if you see that what's happening today isn't that much different from the past.
Booker: This isn't complicated. Laws like this create structural barriers that systematically disenfranchise minorities and poor people. You refused to answer a lot of my questions. We are in a time in which states are enacting laws across the country to disenfranchise minority voters.
Booker: Your answers don't provide me comfort.
Booker: I'm a prisoner of hope like you, but we have a long way to go. Nothing you have said here today gives me comfort that on the court you would drive forward and see that we have that kind of work today.
Kavanaugh asks for a minute to respond.
Kavanaugh: I've written that the long march to racial equality is not over.
Kavanaugh: I was all over the real-world effects of the law in South Carolina that you mentioned.
Kavanaugh is going over aspects of his record in which he feels he has worked for racial justice and against racial bias.
Kavanaugh also going over his efforts to hire minority law clerks.
Kavanaugh: I've tried to do my best to understand the real world and to rule fairly.
Lee: Rules of fairness and our committee say we have to treat people with respect. You can't cross-examine someone about a document they can't see.
Lee is saying that some documents Booker used were committee confidential.
Lee: I would suggest we go through the proper procedures.
Kennedy, as chairman: The objection is duly noted.
Booker: That's why this system is rigged.
Booker: I have been asking for an email titled "racial profiling," which was somehow designated as something the public could not see.
Booker: You have a system where there are whole areas of the nominee's career where we are not allowed to let these out. I know you are outlining a process. But the process is unfair, unjust, unnecessary.
Lee: I will go with you hand in hand. I agree with you. I don't know why it was marked committee confidential. But we do have to follow procedure.
Kennedy now complimenting Kavanaugh on his demeanor and for his behavior.
We're moving into Sen. Kennedy's questioning now. I wonder if because he is acting as chairman because Grassley is not here, he is for this moment more senior than Tillis. Or maybe Tillis just yielded to Kennedy for now.
Kennedy: Inappropriate for judge to rewrite Constitution to advance an agenda. Do you agree?
Kavanaugh: Yes, of course, senator.
Kennedy: Judges also have an obligation to protect inalienable rights, even when the majorities want to take them away. The Bill of Rights is not there so much for the quarterback or prom queen but for the one who sees the world differently. Can we agree on that?
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