Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett (ACB) began her first full session on the high court with lingering doubts from a conservative student in her senior year at Stony Brook University facing expulsion with the loss of all semester credits and tuition, thanks to a Barrett ruling, less than one year after leftists beat the student for supporting Barrett confirmation.
“It definitely really upsets me, because I feel that I fight for good people on social media, and for Amy Coney Barrett in person, where I am physically assaulted, and then she goes ahead and does things that we did not vote her in for,” said Isabella Maria DeLuca, a political science-pre-law major at the school, which is part of State University of New York system.
“I got through all these things on behalf of her—even though she doesn’t know who I am—and she does things like that,” said DeLuca, who is also a Turning Point USA Ambassador.
https://twitter.com/IsabellaMDeLuca/status/1426650772503138307?s=20
Barrett, the justice who handles appeals from Indiana, dismissed the petition from Ryan Klaassen, and eight others, who challenged Indiana University’s vaccine mandate without reaching out to the state for input, nor did she bring the matter before the other eight justices.
This ruling, in effect, greenlit COVID-19 vaccine mandates for colleges across the country, including Stony Brook University, which posted:
According to the university’s website, all students who do not provide proof of their vaccination by Sept. 24 will be expelled from in-person classes without any accommodation:
No remote learning options are available for students who do not want to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, outside of any courses already offered remotely that have available seats. Students may not request a change in course modality to avoid receiving a COVID-19 vaccination, and faculty may not accommodate such requests received.
The school encourages its employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, but it is not mandatory. Instead, those unvaccinated are subject to weekly COVID-19 testing.
Despite the vaccine mandate, the former intern for Rep. Lee Zeldin (R.-N.Y.) said there is no way she will relent.
“For me, I feel like it’s not worth the risk to my health or my fertility for something like COVID-19 that I could easily recover from if I do get it, and then, at that point, there’s natural immunity,” she said.
DeLuca said she is also concerned about the reports of pregnant women suffering miscarriages.
https://twitter.com/IsabellaMDeLuca/status/1443603925664419847?s=20
“I’m 21, I haven’t had kids yet, and so the last thing I want to do is start doing something that’s going to mess up my fertility,” she said. “I’m not saying COVID-19 is not real. I’m not saying that the vaccine is this horrible thing—I just don’t see the point in me getting it. I work out. I eat very healthily.”
Deluca, who is taking seven classes in the Fall 2021 semester, said she already received the email informing her of her expulsion. Still, she went ahead with her midterms, even as she knows her semester is over.
Leftists attacked Deluca in front of the Supreme Court
The East Setauket, New York, native said in the fall of 2020; she was an intern at the Department of Education. She and a group of other conservative students went to the Supreme Court to rally for President Donald J. Trump‘s nomination of Barrett to the Supreme Court.
When she and her friends arrived, there was also a large group of leftwing protesters opposed to the Barrett nomination, she said.
“I was holding a Trump 2020 sign,” DeLuca said.
“Originally, I was with a group of people, but during the confrontation, I got separated by all the protesters,” she said. “They were literally surrounding me.”
The leftists encircling her were all women, except for two men, she said.
“They ranged from different ages; some were young, some middle-aged, some were even older,” she said. “Some were wearing Black Lives Matter shirts, other shirts said: ‘My Body, My Choice,’ and there were Ruth Bader Ginsberg shirts, and also those pink hats they wear at women’s marches—the kinda merch that supports what they were marching for.”
In the beginning, the confrontation was verbal, DeLuca said.
“They were insulting me,” she said. “They were insulting the way that I looked. They were verbally harassing me, and at some point, they spit in my face—I’m not sure that was an accident or on purpose.”
In addition to her “Trump 2020” sign, she held a Trump flag.
“I didn’t say anything back or really engage too much with these people,” she said.
“That went on for a few hours, and at some point, one woman grabbed my Trump flag out of my hand, and I tried to retrieve the flag back,” she said.
“I put my hand up while I was reaching down, so she wouldn’t kick me when I was down, but when I did that, I got punched in the face by one woman,” DeLuca said.
“Then, I was kinda hesitating,” she said.
“I was thinking: ‘Do I hit back?’ ‘What do I do?’ I wanted to defend myself; then another woman got involved,” she said. “Both women hit me in the face, punched me in the face, and at another point, one of the women actually choked me.”
Finally, one of the men in the leftist mob intervened to stop the attack, she said. “He told me that maybe if I were wearing a mask, the attack wouldn’t have happened.”
Obviously not my best look, but this is how my face looks now. pic.twitter.com/QuQ6OeIUOa
— Isabella Maria DeLuca (@IsabellaMDeLuca) October 19, 2020
DeLuca said she was ignored by the police officers assigned to the Supreme Court, and even though she was attacked in front of the building, she did not see any of them come to her aid. Once she was back on her feet, she remembers walking one or two blocks until she found a Metropolitan Police officer, who she told about the attack.
After speaking with the officer, the Turning Point USA Ambassador said she went to the hospital to address her injuries. “I had strained my neck, and I had already had a traumatic brain injury from another incident, so me getting punched in my head made it worse.”
The political science-pre-law major had contusions all over her face in addition to the neck strain and the retriggering of her previous brain injury.
“My whole face was completely bruised,” she said. “I just had to wait for it to go away.”
ACB’s betrayal stings
During her interview with Star News Network, DeLuca went silent for long moments lest other students overhear her support for Trump or her vaccine skepticism, said she has recovered from her strains, and her bruises have healed.
Still, it hurts that Supreme Court Associate Amy Coney Barrett, the woman for whom she was beaten, is the same woman derailing her education.
“Yeah, you feel betrayed,” she said.
“There’s no other way to put it,” she said.
“I think I speak for a lot of people when I say we’re confused and we feel betrayed because the Supreme Court justices are your last hope,” she said.
Her message to Justice Barrett is straightforward: “I just got beat up badly in November for supporting you, and now you’re not going to support people like me—and now, people like me get kicked out of school.”
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Neil W. McCabe is a Washington-based national political reporter for The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. In addition to the Star Newspaper, he has covered the White House, Capitol Hill and national politics for One America News, Breitbart, Human Events and Townhall. Before coming to Washington, he was a staff reporter for Boston’s Catholic paper, The Pilot, and the editor of two Boston-area community papers, The Somerville News and The Alewife. McCabe is a public affairs NCO in the Army Reserve and he deployed for 15 months to Iraq as a combat historian.
