Brett Kavanaugh Said Brandi Levy is the Michael Jordan of Getting Cut from the Mahanoy Area Cheer Team

Supreme Court Justice Brett “I Like Beer” Kavanaugh on Wednesday compared former Mahanoy Area High School cheerleader Brandi Levy to the person he considers the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan.

Sorry, Lebron.

You could now say that Levy is like the Michael Jordan of getting cut from the Golden Bears varsity cheer squad. And whether or not she emerges victorious over the authoritarian public school district in the case of Mahanoy Area v. BL, she’ll at least have that to hang her hat on.

While justices were asking questions of the attorney representing Mahanoy Area School District before the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh wondered about something that really isn’t pertinent to the case, per se, but was essentially the reason why it had reached the Supreme Court. (READ: Mahanoy Area Appeals to Supreme Court in Cheerleader Free Speech Case)

Simply, Kavanaugh wondered if, in this case, the punishment fit the crime, hypothetically.

Kavanaugh References Michael Jordan in Supreme Court Case of Cursing Mahanoy Area Cheerleader

Mahanoy Area v. BL is technically a First Amendment case that seeks an answer to whether school districts have the authority to police off-campus student speech. Levy was suspended from the Mahanoy Area cheer team back in 2018 for posting an expletive-laden Snapchat message in which she expressed frustration with, among other things, cheerleading or “cheer” as she wrote.

Levy posted that message soon after she found out that she didn’t make the varsity cheer team for her upcoming sophomore year.

That moment caused the teen to boil over in frustration and post what she did on Snapchat: “F*** school F*** softball F*** cheer F*** everything”

Well, Kavanaugh feels that Levy’s reaction was one that any competitive person would have, especially someone in Levy’s shoes.

“She’s competitive, she cares, she blew off steam like millions of other kids have when they’re disappointed about being cut from the high school team or not being in the starting lineup or not making all-league,” Kavanaugh said.

That’s when he compared what Levy posted to a speech that Jordan made in 2009 when he got inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame.

During that speech, Jordan references the time when he was cut from his high school team. Jordan says that decision still bothers him to the day.

“He wasn’t joking,” Kavanaugh said of the former Chicago Bulls star. “He was critical 30 years later. It still bothered him.

“And I think that’s just emblematic of how much it means to kids to make a high school team. It is so important to their lives, and coaches sweat the cuts, and it guts coaches to have to cut a kid who’s on the bubble, and good coaches understand the importance and they understand the emotions.”

Again, this isn’t really a case of whether the punishment was supposed to fit the crime. It’s about whether Mahanoy Area was allowed to punish the cheerleader at all but had a more fitting “punishment” been handed out originally, this likely would have never landed in a court at all.

 

Twitter Reacts to Michael Jordan Reference at Supreme Court

The, uh, what some might call a mini rant about His Airness, didn’t go unnoticed online.

User @breathtkinan wrote, “Kavanaugh used most of his time today for an extended riff about … Michael Jordan?”

https://twitter.com/breathtkinan/status/1387623531652042753

A blue checkmark user even chimed in with this take on Kavanaugh’s defense of Levy:

Kavanaugh absolutely goes to the mat for the cursing cheerleader “as a judge, and maybe as a coach and a parent too.“

“She blew off steam like millions of other kids have when they’re disappointed about being cut from a high school team.” He even invokes Michael Jordan! pic.twitter.com/kypVpnR9Pb

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) April 28, 2021

Justice Kavanaugh working Michael Jordan into oral argument just now is awesome! #SCOTUS pic.twitter.com/nandht8Bd5

— Jackson Treadway (@Jaxtread42) April 28, 2021

User @ishapiro wonders if Kavanaugh got clearance from Lebron James to call Jordan the GOAT:

https://twitter.com/ishapiro/status/1387413850069389312

 

READ FULL COVERAGE OF MAHANOY AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT v. BL:

•  Supreme Court Oral Arguments in Mahanoy Area School District v. BL
• SCOTUS to Hear Mahanoy Cheerleader Free Speech Case
• Both Sides of Mahanoy Area Cheerleading Case Argue in Public – School Appeals to SCOTUS

Photo license via Depositphotos

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