Justice Amy Coney Barrett is once again the target of right-wing critics. In the Supreme Court’s terrible ruling upholding birthright citizenship, Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the leftist justices against President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order banning birth tourism.

There was a lot of understandable outcry from right-wing commentators. Some of it was deserving. And then there were the takes from way out in, well, right field.

For example, Daily Wire personality Matt Walsh had this fiery response to Justice Barrett’s decision: “It turns out that Amy Coney Barrett is a DEI hire, little better than Kentanji Jackson. Terrible pick. When’s the last time we had a Republican president who didn’t put a liberal justice on the court?”

While this reaction was outsized, there is a sentiment among many conservatives that Justices Barrett, Roberts, and even Brett Kavanaugh are not conservative enough. Without a doubt, upholding birthright citizenship was not the first time that the Court’s more originalist justices have bent under pressure (our Nate Jackson discussed this in great detail last year), which is why conservatives feel like they have been burned time and again. Consequently, some right-wing pundits often fly off the handle after these types of rulings.

In the case of birthright citizenship, we know that illegal immigrants cross the border to have their children on American soil. They are what we call “anchor babies.” There are even instances of Chinese baby farms on U.S. soil for the express purpose of creating little American citizens over whom Beijing has control.

Justices do not write the law; they uphold it. And one thing that can be said of Amy Coney Barrett is that she is scrupulous in her thinking. As the National Review editors so eloquently put it:

The quality of her work shames any suggestion that Barrett makes decisions from emotion or from cowardice. Perfect Olympian impartiality is impossible for even the greatest of jurists, but Barrett’s opinions, and her questions at argument, consistently show the same thorough diligence, even temper, and stickling for detail and proper procedure that characterized her long career as an academic. The only occasions when she has flashed any emotion have been in pointed debates with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson over questions of methodology and consistency in the majority’s approach. If there is a fair critique of Barrett, it might be that she’s occasionally too devoted to process, especially on issues of standing to sue — but that is by far a lesser sin than its opposite.

Justice Barrett’s decisions do not always align with right-wing causes. She is not a puppet of either side, though she does hold an originalist viewpoint most of the time when it comes to interpreting the law and weighing its constitutionality. She has cast her judgment often in favor of conservative causes. Recall that her life was threatened after she voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Justice Barrett:

Voted to get rid of Roe v. Wade.
Voted to get rid of Chevron.
Gave President Trump immunity from prosecution.
Blocked states from removing President Trump from the ballot.
Ended affirmative action.
Ended temporary protected status for Haitians and Syrians.… https://t.co/QzuFIuuvsE

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) June 30, 2026

Barrett is also the complete opposite of Jackson, who is so obviously a DEI hire and a left-wing activist in a robe that even her leftist colleagues find her lack of legal academic rigor exasperating.

Moreover, Jackson is much more interested in putting her face on the covers of magazines, having recently appeared on the cover of Essence with the subtitle, “The People’s Champion.”

“As the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court, there is no better moment to celebrate her extraordinary legacy,” the magazine posted on social media. “Ketanji Brown Jackson represents the American Dream and serves as a powerful voice for those simply seeking the God-given birthrights promised to every American.”

Jackson’s dedication to fame has drawn well-deserved barbs. What would be a disgrace is if conservatives also abandoned the (mostly) fair, rigorous, and honest interpretation of the law in exchange for a conservative shill. Leftists may be fine with an activist on the nation’s highest court, but the rest of the country looks at Ketanji Brown Jackson and groans.

As for Amy Coney Barrett, this negative attention is par for the course. She is not there to make conservative pundits happy; she is there to interpret the law, and that is going to upset both political parties at some point if she’s doing her job right. We may not agree with her on birthright citizenship, among other examples, but the answer is not to cast her into outer darkness and label her a DEI hire.