SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett's startling views on race have come to light during a series of hearings that could lead to her confirmation as the next Supreme Court Justice, according to an Associated Press review of her past court decisions.

Due to the Republican majority in the Senate, her appointment as Ruth Bader Ginsburg's replacement is all but confirmed, making the hearings largely theatric. Because Barrett is almost certain to be appointed, she has spent the first days of her confirmation hearings dodging most questions from Democratic Senators by saying she can't answer hypothetical questions, one of the main ways Senators can figure out what she believes.

But the inevitability of her appointment has not stopped Senators like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, from using the hearings as a way to shed light on many of Barrett's regressive, conservative views on women's healthcare, race, gun rights, presidential power and other pertinent issues.

Outside of the hearings, reporters have begun to dig into the nearly 100 decisions Barrett has made as a judge on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the last three years.

The Associated Press highlighted one particular discrimination case where Barrett's views on racism were made evident.

Barrett wrote a 2019 decision for a case centered on Terry Smith, a Black transportation employee in Illinois who sued after he was called a "n****r" by his boss Lloyd Colbert and then fired.

Barrett and two other judges ruled unanimously against Smith and she wrote the decision in the case, saying that hearing the slur at work was not enough to prove discrimination.

“The n-word is an egregious racial epithet. That said, Smith can’t win simply by proving that the word was uttered. He must also demonstrate that Colbert’s use of this word altered the conditions of his employment and created a hostile or abusive working environment,” Barrett wrote in Smith v. Illinois Department of Transportation, according to the Associated Press.

She criticized Smith later on in the decision.

"[He] introduced no evidence that Colbert’s use of the n-word changed his subjective experience of the workplace. To be sure, Smith testified that his time at the Department caused him psychological distress. But that was for reasons that predated his run-in with Colbert and had nothing to do with his race," the 48-year-old circuit judge said. "His tenure at the Department was rocky from the outset because of his poor track record.”

The controversial decision went against what many judges, even Republican ones, have previously said when it comes to the use of racial slurs in the workplace. The Associated Press noted that her own future colleague, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, took the completely opposite view in a 2013 case.

While working as a federal appeals court judge, the controversial Supreme Court Justice wrote an opinion where he said that "being called the n-word by a supervisor…suffices by itself to establish a racially hostile work environment."

"That epithet has been labeled, variously, a term that ‘sums up . . . all the bitter years of insult and struggle in America,’ ‘pure anathema to African-Americans,’ and ’probably the most offensive word in English," Kavanaugh concluded.

“No other word in the English language so powerfully or instantly calls to mind our country’s long and brutal struggle to overcome racism and discrimination against African-Americans. In short, the case law demonstrates that a single, sufficiently severe incident may create a hostile work environment," he added.

Republicans in the Senate and conservative news outlets have defended Barrett's regressive views on race, citing her adopted children from Haiti as evidence that she could not be racist.

But Barrett has been involved in dozens of cases where her views on race had an effect on her rulings. In multiple immigration cases she has ruled against people of color, even writing a dissent in one case where Trump administration officials wanted the right to deny people green cards and legal status over the perceived potential use of government services.

The Associated Press also showed, through her past decisions, that Barrett's decisions made it easier for men to dispute sexual assault allegations on college campuses and that she once said certain rights like voting and jury service were reserved only for "virtuous citizens.” On the opposite end, she ruled that felons should be allowed to carry guns after completing their sentences.

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