Trigger alert: A year ago, Brett Kavanaugh joined Supreme Court

NEW CASES INCLUDE LGBTQ, ABORTION, IMMIGRATION

Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Sunday completes his first year on the U.S. Supreme Court.

His opponents last year launched an unprecedented attack on him in the weeks leading up to the confirmation vote.

Alaska’s Left got in the act to oppose Kavanaugh last September, along with other anti-Trump interests from around the country. The ACLU paid for 100 women from Alaska to fly to Washington D.C. to lobby Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan to vote against Kavanaugh’s nomination. In the end, Murkowski voted “present” during the vote on Kavanaugh, while Sullivan voted in favor of him.

Murkowski was all over the national news as an important vote for the Left to turn, and her pitting of her vote against the president concerned Alaska Republicans. Because she seemed one of the more likely to turn against Kavanaugh, she became the target of a barrage of messaging.

[Read: Murkowski being pressured by Natives to vote no on Kavanaugh]

Kavanaugh had been accused of all kinds of wretchedness in the weeks prior, including sexual assault while he was in high school. There had never before been Supreme Court nominee hearings like the ones that America witnessed in September of 2018.

[Read: The pressure is on Murkowski]

But the real reason for opposition to his nomination was because the Left didn’t want to concede another seat on the Supreme Court to a conservative constitutionalist, and because never-Trumpers wanted to make every step of the Trump presidency a living hell for him.

[Read: ACLU paying for 100 Alaskans to travel to DC]

Even Gov. Bill Walker and Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott weighed in against Kavanaugh, as did the Alaska Network on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault and Alaska Native groups such as the Alaska Federation of Natives.

On Monday, the next term of the Supreme Court begins, and its calendar is filling with issues that matter to both conservatives and progressives: Abortion, LGBTQ+ accommodations, and immigration. A couple of more are expected to be announced on Monday, but so far, it’s a lineup of cases that will bring the Left out again to savage traditionalists.

The court will take up on Monday Kahler v. Kansas, the question of whether a state may abolish the insanity defense.

On Tuesday, an issue of employment discrimination will be heard. The question is whether the 1964 anti-discrimination laws protect gay, lesbian, and transgender employees. The cases are  Bostock v. Clayton County, and  Altitude Express v. Zarda. They will be heard together.

The abortion case to be heard later this year or early next year is a challenge to Louisiana’s hospital admitting privileges law, which would severely limit abortions in the state. Louisiana law requires doctors who perform abortions to have right to admit patients at local hospitals. It will be the first abortion-related case heard with the more conservative makeup of the court in the Kavanaugh era.

The court will also hear two cases concerning U.S. Forest Service powers to grant rights of way through lands traversed by Appalachian Trail for the purpose of a proposed gasline.

In US v. Sineneng-Smith, the Court will review 9th Circuit ruling that invalidated a federal law making it a crime to encourage or cause illegal immigration for financial gain.