Judges Involved With Y-12 Break-in Rulings Are on Supreme-Court Shortlist

Among the jurists who President Donald Trump could tap to fill an impending Supreme Court vacancy are two who were involved with the case of an octogenarian nun who broke into the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and defaced a uranium storehouse.

Judge Amul Thapar, presently of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit but in 2014 a U.S. District Court judge, sentenced Sister Megan Rice of the Catholic Society of the Holy Child Jesus to 35 months in prison for breaking into Y-12 two years earlier.

Rice, and two other Transform Now Plowshares protesters who broke into Y-12 with her, were freed in 2015 on appeal at the order of judges including Raymond Kethledge: another on Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court justices, who also serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The trio was not sent back to prison.

Trump met with both judges this week, The Associated Press and other outlets reported. Kethledge was reported Thursday by NPR and other news sources to be among the top three candidates. The White House is expected to formally announce its nominee on Monday.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative swing-vote on the nine-member court, announced last week he would retire at the end of July.

After the 2012 break-in, then-Y-12 prime contractor B&W Y-12 fired WSI Oak Ridge: the site’s GS4-owned security subcontractor.

The Supreme Court, one of the three branches of the federal government, is the court of final appeal in the U.S. justice system, empowered to rule on whether decisions by lower courts violate the U.S. constitution.