Skip to content Skip to footer

Manchin Reportedly Backing Corporate-Friendly Michelle Childs for Supreme Court

Labor groups and progressives have raised concerns about Manchin’s reported preferred candidate, J. Michelle Childs.

Sen. Joe Manchin questions witnesses during a hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on January 11, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

As President Joe Biden considers several top Supreme Court picks, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) is reportedly telling colleagues in private that he prefers a GOP-backed candidate, who unions and pro-labor advocates have sounded the alarm about for her history of advocating for corporations against workers, Punchbowl News has reported.

According to Punchbowl, multiple anonymous sources have said that Manchin wants J. Michelle Childs in the Supreme Court because she has bipartisan support, despite the fact that Supreme Court nominees only need 51 votes to pass. The lawmaker also cites her public school education as a plus.

Childs does indeed have support from conservatives. Earlier this month, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) voiced his support for the District Court judge and predicted that she would get more than 10 Republican votes in the Senate. Manchin’s vote is crucial for Democrats if Biden picks a different nominee, however, as Democrats will need every senator in their caucus to vote “yes.”

But labor groups have raised concerns about Childs, citing her history as a management-side lawyer who worked for corporations in cases of racial discrimination and union drives. Not every potential pick has done this, the groups pointed out.

“She comes from an anti-union law firm where she spent time defending employers from claims of civil rights and labor law violations,” David Borer, general counsel of the American Federation of Government Employees, told The Washington Post earlier this month. “That’s not what we need.”

Progressives also take issue with Childs’s history as a judge in the criminal legal system. As a judge, The American Prospect has reported, Childs has issued numerous harsh rulings against incarcerated people that were later overturned. In 2009, Childs sentenced a man to 12 years in prison for selling only about half a pound of marijuana.

“Judge Childs’s repeated opposition to leniency in sentencing and alleged abuse cases brought by prisoners is notable in its own right,” wrote The American Prospect’s Alexander Sammon. “That she made those decisions on such dubious grounds that they were routinely overturned by higher courts indicates a commitment to tough-on-crime rulings beyond the letter of procedure.”

This Supreme Court pick is crucial for Democrats, who progressives say should take full advantage of the seat being left by Democratic justice Stephen Breyer by filling it with a strong progressive pick. The very fact that Childs has the support of Republicans has led some progressives to believe that Childs may be backed by corporate donors.

Picking someone who appeals to Republicans would be antithetical to the goal of balancing out the Supreme Court – especially since conservatives have spent years bending and changing the rules to pack the court with extremist right-wing justices, and as the Court is on the precipice of crucial decisions on issues like abortion.

Earlier this month, a group of Black women in the House sent a letter to Biden, applauding him for pledging to pick a Black woman to fill the seat and urging him to pick a civil rights champion. Biden’s pick would be the first Black woman to ever sit on the High Court.

“There is no shortage of incredible, qualified, leading Black female candidates to serve on the Supreme Court,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said in an interview. “But the question is, what is going to be that nominee’s worldview?”

While Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t specifically advocated against any candidates, she says that the candidate’s stances on issues like Citizens United are crucial.

Progressive groups like Justice Democrats have said that someone like Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is in contention for the Supreme Court seat, would be an appropriate choice.

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 464 new monthly donors in the next 8 days.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy