The high-end Morton’s Steakhouse is being mocked by everyone from comedy writers to legal experts after defending Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who dined at one of the chain’s restaurants in Washington, D.C. Thursday night, but didn’t quite make it to dessert.
“Protesters soon showed up out front, called the manager to tell him to kick Kavanaugh out and later tweeted that the justice was forced to exit through the rear of the restaurant,” according to a report at Politico.
Morton’s is part of the Landry’s restaurant and casino chain owned by billionaire and( largely) GOP donor Tilman Fertitta, who also owns the Houston Rockets.
The restaurant “was outraged about the incident,” and told Politico: “Honorable Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh and all of our other patrons at the restaurant were unduly harassed by unruly protestors while eating dinner at our Morton’s restaurant. Politics, regardless of your side or views, should not trample the freedom at play of the right to congregate and eat dinner. There is a time and place for everything. Disturbing the dinner of all of our customers was an act of selfishness and void of decency.”
The activist group that takes credit for protesting Kavanaugh has now announced they will pay for tips that lead them to other conservative justices.
“If you see Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Coney Barrett or Roberts DM us with the details!” tweeted ShutDownDC. “We’ll venmo you $50 for a confirmed sighting and $200 if they’re still there 30 mins after your message.”
Meanwhile, some latched on to the fictional “right…to eat dinner” claim, which has drawn mockery. Many note the conservative justice signed onto the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, which makes the legal (some say dubious or false) claim there is no constitutional right to privacy.
“Dinner isn’t even mentioned in the constitution though. And there are states where he’s welcome probably,” snarked Condé Nast legal affairs editor Luke Zaleski.
“Seriously I doubt the founders had even heard of Morton’s,” wrote attorney Terri Gerstein, apparently mocking the conservative justices’ new claim defending its opinion in the Alito decision: “The Court finds that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition.”
National security lawyer Bradley Moss similarly weighed in: “Sorry, under the originalist reading of the Constitution there is no ‘right’ to eat dinner. The Founding Fathers never spoke of a right to eat dinner, therefore the right does not exist.”
“If only the right to eat at Morton’s was explicit in the text of the Constitution and deeply rooted in the history and traditions of this country,” NYU Professor of Law Melissa Murray sarcastically lamented.
“There is no ‘right to eat dinner’ in the Constitution. A textualist must conclude Americans don’t have that right. Congress could’ve passed a statute, but hasn’t. It could reasonably fall under the right to privacy, but the SCOTUS majority doesn’t seem to think that exists either,” added University of Illinois International Relations professor Nicholas Grossman.
Joyce Vance, the former U.S. Attorney who is now a legal analyst on MSNBC and NBC News, and a law professor warned the Court: “SCOTUS might want to consider reopening its front steps to protestors instead of fencing itself off from the country. People will exercise their 1st amendment rights wherever they can if the Court continues to block them out of the traditional spot.”
Author and teacher Chasten Buttigieg, who happens to be married to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, did not shy away from commenting: “Sounds like he just wanted some privacy to make his own dining decisions.”
The Nation’s Justice correspondent Elie Mystal brought his usual wit to the table: “Imagine lying to a Congress and the American people to get an unaccountable job for life, getting that job, using your unaccountable power to take away rights, then getting pissy that the people you hurt interrupted your ice cream.”
Finally, Emmy-winner and former writer for The Colbert Report, Frank Lesser mocks the conservative jurist and the right’s claims about conception: “It doesn’t matter if protesters interrupt his meal because Brett Kavanaugh believes dinner begins at reservation.”