Hawley has ‘no interest’ in serving on Supreme Court after Trump adds him to list

President Donald Trump on Wednesday named Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley to his list of potential U.S. Supreme Court nominees, placing the first-term senator among a pool of contenders if a vacancy emerges on the court.

Hawley, 40, said a short time later he has “no interest in the high court.”

“I appreciate the President’s confidence in listing me as a potential Supreme Court nominee,” Hawley tweeted. “But as I told the President, Missourians elected me to fight for them in the Senate, and I have no interest in the high court. I look forward to confirming constitutional conservatives.”

Trump also added Republican Sens. Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz to the list along with 17 others. The announcement comes as the incumbent president heads into the final stretch of his re-election campaign and is eager to curry favor among conservative voters who he must retain to win a second term.

Hawley previously served as Missouri attorney general and unseated Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill in 2018.

A Yale Law School graduate who clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts, he developed a reputation in conservative legal circles for his work on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, a case in which the Supreme Court ruled that private employers may deny contraceptive insurance coverage based on a religious objection.

As a senator, Hawley has vowed not to support a Supreme Court nominee unless they have said Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that legalized abortion nationwide, was wrongly decided.