Brett Kavanaugh's Manly Judicial Voice

In 1983, Brett Kavanaugh and his kegger football teammates smirkingly wrote in the Georgetown Prep Yearbook that they were “Renate Alumni.” This backslapping, ha-ha moment was meant to convey that a high school friend of theirs was also their sexual conquest.

More than 30 years later, the same Kavanaugh wrote a cheeky dissenting opinion in SeaWorld v. OSHA. This case also featured a female victim, Dawn Brancheau. She was the Sea World trainer who was dragged during a show by a killer whale and violently drowned.

OSHA fined SeaWorld for violating four safety rules. Merrick Garland wrote the D.C. Circuit’s majority opinion upholding the fine.

Judge Kavanaugh thought this was a case of extreme bureaucratic overreach by OSHA. He sided with Sea World—effectively dismissing any lessons to be learned from Ms. Brancheau’s horrifying death.

When you read the dissent, its manly tone gives off the scent of too much Axe used by a teenage boy.

Quoting now:

“Football. Ice hockey. Downhill skiing. Air shows. The circus. Horse racing. Tiger taming. Standing in the batter’s box against a 95 mile an hour fastball.  Bull riding at the rodeo.  Skydiving into the stadium before a football game.  Daredevil motorcycle jumps.  Stock car racing. Cheerleading vaults. Boxing. The balance beam….

When should we as a society paternalistically decide that the participants in these sports and entertainment activities must be protected from themselves—that the risk of significant physical injury is simply too great even for eager and willing participants?” 

Government is the bad guy here. SeaWorld is the victim. Dawn Brancheau is a sacrifice offered up on the muscular altar of glory-seeking adventure. The high school sexual braggart in 1983 and the polished D.C. Circuit judge in 2014 speak with the same smug, husky, testosterone-driven voice.