Amy Coney Barrett was supposed to be Donald Trump’s crowning judicial pick — the lock to cement a hard-right Supreme Court for decades. But she’s becoming his biggest legal disappointment.
Trump appointed Barrett in a rush to replace liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg before the 2020 election, betting that the devout Catholic and former Scalia clerk would be a guaranteed vote for the MAGA agenda. He even claimed his justices would be “automatic” votes to overturn Roe v. Wade. She delivered that vote. But what came next is what’s enraging the far right.
Behind closed doors, Barrett initially didn’t even want the Court to hear the Dobbs case that overturned Roe. And while she ultimately joined the decision, her cautious, methodical approach has made her a frequent outlier in the Court’s right-wing bloc — especially when it comes to Trump.
“She’s kind of alone on the Supreme Court,” journalist Jodi Kantor reported. “President Trump has complained about her in private.”
Barrett has voted against Trump more than any other Republican-appointed justice on the Court, including in three major cases tied to his effort to overturn the 2020 election and in multiple emergency applications involving his legal fights. She’s also the justice who recused herself in a case that could have allowed taxpayer funding of a religious charter school — causing a 4–4 deadlock that enraged conservative activists.
Right-wing operatives have responded with venom. Trump allies call her a “D.E.I. hire.” Far-right legal activist Mike Davis blasted her for lacking “courage.” Steve Bannon tore into her on his podcast with personal attacks so crude that Justice Neil Gorsuch called to condemn them. And even her family has been targeted with threats and fake pizza deliveries as intimidation.
Inside the Court, she’s clashing with fellow conservatives — especially Justices Alito and Thomas. When Alito pushed the Court to use a religious liberty case to blow up decades of precedent, Barrett blocked it. “She was skeptical,” Kantor wrote, “but wanted to know what could replace it.” In response, Alito wrote a furious 77-page opinion, accusing the Court of emitting “a wisp of a decision.”
She’s also taken aim at Thomas’ rigid use of history to justify rulings. In a case involving the phrase “Trump Too Small,” Barrett agreed with the outcome but publicly called out Thomas: “The historical record does not alone suffice.”
Legal scholars say she’s redrawing the boundaries of originalism. “She’s not Scalia,” said researchers Lee Epstein, Andrew D. Martin, and Michael J. Nelson. “She’s playing an increasingly central role on the Court.”
That central role is defined by restraint — and isolation. “She hasn’t found a team,” said legal analyst Sarah Isgur. Barrett often signs onto just slivers of majority opinions, or writes separately to say her conservative colleagues got the reasoning wrong. She’s joined liberal Justices Sotomayor and Kagan 82% of the time this term in non-unanimous cases — up from 39% in her first term.
Yet Barrett isn’t a liberal. “She’s absolutely conservative, not interested in shifting,” said Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor who clerked with her. But she’s not marching in lockstep with the MAGA wing, and that’s why Trump and the far right are furious.
Her caution is also driving real consequences. She effectively killed a major Trump-aligned case on abortion access by helping dismiss it on procedural grounds. She’s opposed letting lower courts rubber-stamp sweeping nationwide injunctions — a tool Trump relies on. And she’s now the swing vote in several Trump-linked cases set to shape the next election.
Barrett once said, “If you find yourself liking the results of every decision that you make, you’re in the wrong job.” Her record proves she’s serious — even if it means turning on the man who put her on the Court.
Behind her quiet demeanor and scholarly distance, Amy Coney Barrett is mounting a subtle but powerful resistance — not just to Trump, but to the most radical forces in the conservative legal movement.
