Dear Senators Grassley and Durbin:
On behalf of the National Women’s Law Center (the “Law Center”), an organization that has advocated on behalf of women and girls for over fifty years, we write in strong opposition to the nomination of Ms. Jennifer Mascott for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Ms. Mascott’s legal record demonstrates a dedication to undermining abortion access and eroding Title IX sexual harassment protections for students, as well as biased and ideological scholarship on executive overreach. During her time as law professor, she submitted briefs that
challenged the FDA’s approval of medication abortion in a case against the Biden administration and that sought to block a California law that protected pregnant people against deceitful and dangerous practices. Ms. Mascott’s legal scholarship is focused on the separation of powers and the regulatory state, yet she manipulates her academic positions to support her political biases. For example, she defended the controversial Texas abortion ban and bounty law (SB 8) despite the fact that law implicates troubling critical separation of powers concerns and despite the author’s clear intent to circumvent judicial review and violate constitutional rights. Ms. Mascott has also taken widely varying positions on the power of the presidency based on who is president, for example, by championing legal immunity for President Trump. Further, Ms. Mascott defended Secretary Betsy Devos’s Title IX regulation that undermined reporting and investigation of sex-based harassment in colleges and stigmatized and endangered student survivors. Ms. Mascott’s dedication to upending the legal rights and protections critical to women and girls and clear bias for President Trump calls into question her ability to be fairminded jurist.
Read the full letter here.