During Supreme Court confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill earlier this week, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn asked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to give the definition of a woman. Jackson responded by saying she couldn't do so because she "isn't a biologist."
Senator Blackburn: "Can you provide a definition for the word woman?"
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) March 23, 2022
Judge Jackson: "No. I can't...I'm not a biologist." pic.twitter.com/TRlqUeDGs6
Former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is weighing in on the response and calling it absurd.
(2/2) … Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said, “I don’t know.” The hypocrisy and absurdity of this is that she was nominated by President Biden in large part because she is a woman.
— Tulsi Gabbard ?? (@TulsiGabbard) March 24, 2022
As Gabbard noted, the White House touted the fact that Jackson is a woman when they announced her nomination in February.
"President Biden will announce his intent to nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Currently a judge on U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Judge Jackson is one of the nation’s brightest legal minds. If confirmed, she will be the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court," the White House released in a statement.
Meanwhile, Republican Senator Rand Paul questions how Jackson can effectively evaluate cases at the Supreme Court without being able to define the term woman.
“You know, Senator Blackburn asked her a question and said, ‘Can you define a woman?’ Well, if you’re not even willing to answer that question and many of the questions she has been unwilling to answer, if you can’t answer the question, ‘What is a woman?’ or the definition of a woman, how is she going to adjudicate Title IX cases that have to do with women or women in sports? How is she going to adjudicate whether a boy who swims for can all of a sudden switch and pretend to be a girl and swim on the girls’ team?” Paul said during an interview with Newsmax. “She’s not going to be able to adjudicate any of these things, or perhaps she is telegraphing us that she is going to be able to adjudicate them in such that you can be whatever you feel like you want to be that day, which will lead to a ruination of women’s sports and lead to really chaos in women’s sports and women’s athletics."