‘Riley Gaines is wildly unqualified to posit opinions’: Riley Gaines roasted for claiming Ketanji Brown Jackson is ‘unqualified’ to be a Supreme Court Justice

Riley Gaines, a woman whose “claim to fame” is being transphobic, quickly got shut down after she bizarrely claimed that Ketanji Brown Jackson is “wildly unqualified” to be a Supreme Court Justice.

It’s always strange when self-proclaimed “political activists” and “podcast hosts” suddenly act as if they have the authority to decide who’s qualified to do what. Yet, it happens all the time. A constant mantra of MAGA leading up to the 2024 Presidential election was that Kamala Harris was “unqualified” to be President of the United States. The same people who believed a corrupt billionaire and megalomaniac was qualified to be president suddenly decided that the 49th vice president of the United States, who represented California on the U.S. Senate and served as Attorney General of California and District Attorney of San Francisco for over a decade wasn’t qualified to be president. She was repeatedly called unfit, unqualified, and incompetent even though, in reality, she was far more qualified and experienced than most presidential nominees.

Now, Gaines has offered further proof that when conservatives start throwing around their “unqualified” remarks, they’re usually just trying to insinuate that they don’t think any woman or BIPOC individual is qualified for positions of power.

Riley Gaines claims Ketanji Brown Jackson is unqualified for the Supreme Court

Jackson has been on the receiving end of right-wing outrage after she spoke out against Tennessee banning gender transitions for minors. She compared the current Supreme Court argument over the legality of Tennessee’s ban to the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, which ruled that Virginia’s laws banning interracial marriage violate the Constitution. Jackson was describing how the Virginia and Tennessee laws use the same language about how “you can’t do something that is inconsistent with your own characteristics.” The court’s arguments that Tennessee’s laws don’t discriminate on gender because they apply to boys and girls also parallels arguments made in 1967 that Virginia’s laws didn’t discriminate on race because they applied to both white and Black people.

Of course, conservatives who couldn’t understand Jackson’s argument instantly began losing their minds over it and insulting her intelligence. It wasn’t long before Gaines decided to enter the chat. Gaines is still in the midst of her years-long temper tantrum over tying for fifth place in the 200-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA championship with Lia Thomas, who happens to be a transgender woman. She used the situation to paint herself as a victim, all because she was disgruntled that she wasn’t the one to take home the trophy on the tournament day. Transphobes quickly rallied around her and used her to push their agenda. Now, her entire personality and career is simply being transphobic, including trying to ban transgender women from women’s chess.

Then, the 24-year-old undergrad whose “career” was born out of a temper tantrum decided to take aim at the most qualified associate justice on the Supreme Court. Gaines decided that because she didn’t like Jackson, it must mean Jackson was “wildly unqualified” for the Supreme Court.

It didn’t take long before the internet swiftly schooled her on all of Jackson’s accomplishments. As mentioned above, the only thing that separates Jackson from the rest of the Justices is that she’s way more qualified than them. She graduated from Harvard University twice with honors, receiving both her BA and JD at the Ivy League law school. Her law career spans almost three decades and includes clerking for Justice Stephen Breyer, serving as a federal public defender, being nominated for Vice Chair of the United States Sentencing Commission, serving as a District Judge, and serving as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

All these conservatives and X trolls are crying “unqualified” and “DEI hire” because they’re too embarrassed to admit that they couldn’t understand the complexity of Jackson’s argument. However, unless you can show proof of your two Ivy League degrees, academic honors, and a glowing, beyond-impressive resume spanning almost thirty years in the legal profession, maybe you should keep your opinions about Jackson’s qualifications to yourself.