But she did not take part in a pair of unsigned decisions in favor of a Black Lives Matter activist and a prisoner held in abusive conditions.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett heard her first Supreme Court argument on Monday, asking assured and probing questions in a case on the Freedom of Information Act. Justice Barrett joined the court last Tuesday, a little more than a month after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the rushed and contentious confirmation process that followed President Trump’s nominating her. But Justice Barrett sat out several major election disputes last week, saying she had not had time to review the parties’ filings. She also did not participate in the justices’ private conference last week, saying she needed time to prepare for this week’s arguments. And with the court hearing arguments by phone on Monday because of the pandemic, Justice Barrett did not join her colleagues on the bench and take the junior justice’s traditional seat on its far right. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. did start Monday’s session by greeting the newest justice. “It gives me great pleasure on behalf of myself and my colleagues to welcome Justice Barrett to the court,” he said. “We wish you a long and happy career in our common calling.” The justices ask questions in order of seniority when they hear arguments over the phone, meaning that Justice Barrett went last on Monday. Her first question built on ones that had been posed by the next most junior member of the court, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, appointed by Mr. Trump in 2018. “I want to pick up on the thread that Justice Kavanaugh was just exploring with you,” Justice Barrett told a lawyer for the federal government. Justice Barrett is working in Justice Ginsburg’s old chambers, and she has praised her predecessor as “a woman of enormous talent and consequence” whose “life of public service serves as an example to us all.” But Justice Ginsburg’s law clerks have been assigned to work for the other three liberal justices, all Democratic appointees. Justice Barrett has hired four law clerks, three of whom had earlier Supreme Court clerkships, with Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Anthony M. Kennedy, all Republican appointees. Two of those three had also served as clerks to Justice Kavanaugh when he was an appeals court judge. The choice of law clerks was a small but vivid sign that Justice Barrett is almost certain to become part of a six-member conservative majority. Her first case concerned efforts by the Sierra Club, an environmental group, to obtain documents about harm to endangered species. The federal government has resisted those efforts, saying the records were protected by an exemption to the freedom of information law shielding documents that would disclose deliberations before final decisions.
