WASHINGTON ��U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh predicted two decades ago that the court would soon embrace a color-blind view of the Constitution, an approach that could outlaw affirmative action programs in government and education.
The comment was included in thousands of pages of speeches, testimony and court filings the federal appeals court judge provided to lawmakers as they prepare to consider his nomination.
Kavanaugh's 1999 comment, made in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, came before a Supreme Court argument over an unusual Hawaiian voting rule. Kavanaugh filed a brief urging the court to strike down the rule, which barred non-natives from voting for the trustees of a fund that benefited descendants of the islands' early inhabitants.
"This case is one more step along the way in what I see as an inevitable conclusion within the next 10 to 20 years when the court says we are all one race in the eyes of government," Kavanaugh said in the interview. The Supreme Court later struck down the system 7-2.
More recent rulings have reaffirmed the rights of universities to use affirmative action as an admissions factor to foster student-body diversity. The issue could return to the Supreme Court soon, possibly with a lawsuit claiming that Harvard University's admissions policies discriminate against Asian-Americans.
In a questionnaire submitted to the Senate committee that will consider his nomination, Kavanaugh said another racial discrimination case was among his 10 most important appeals court rulings because of "what it says about anti-discrimination law and American history."
The 2013 case involved a black man who was fired from the U.S. government-sponsored mortgage provider Fannie Mae after accusing a company vice president of referring to him using a racial slur. A three-judge Court of Appeals panel reinstated the lawsuit.
In a separate opinion, Kavanaugh wrote that a single use of that word by a supervisor was enough to permit a discrimination lawsuit claiming a hostile work environment.
"No other word in the English language so powerfully or instantly calls to mind our country's long and brutal struggle to overcome racism and discrimination against African-Americans," he wrote.
Kavanaugh also revealed that he received a phone call from White House Counsel Don McGahn only hours after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced plans to retire June 27. Kavanaugh said he met with President Donald Trump five days later and was offered the nomination during another meeting with Trump July 8. The president made his selection public the next evening.
Completion of the questionnaire is a key step in Kavanaugh's confirmation process, but a bigger battle remains over records from his long career. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the committee, still haven't agreed on terms for a document release request spanning Kavanaugh's years on the Kenneth Starr investigation into Bill and Hillary Clinton, and at President George W. Bush's White House.
Senate Democrats are delaying meetings with the nominee until that matter is resolved. Republican leaders in recent days began accusing Democrats of seeking too-extensive a volume of documents, to drag out a confirmation that the Republicans want completed well before the November midterm elections.
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(Laura Litvan contributed to this report.)
