Penguin Random House Brushes Off Employee Objections to Amy Coney Barrett’s Book Deal
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Penguin Random House said Monday it will not be deterred after an open letter called on the publisher to axe a $2 million deal with Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett over her vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The open letter had received nearly 640 signatures as of Tuesday, including from employees of Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Barnes & Noble, as well as other publishers, authors and members of the press.
Barrett’s detractors called the deal “a case where a corporation has privately funded the destruction of human rights with obscene profits.” The letter claims its signatories “care deeply about freedom of speech” and “recognize that harm is done to a democracy not only in the form of censorship, but also in the form of assault on inalienable human rights.”
“As such, we are calling on Penguin Random House to recognize its own history and corporate responsibility commitments by reevaluating its decision to move forward with publishing Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s forthcoming book,” the letter said.
The book is being published by Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Random House that focuses on conservative content.
Adrian Zackheim, publisher of Sentinel, told the Wall Street Journal: “We remain fully committed to publishing authors who, like Justice Barrett, substantively shape today’s most important conversations.”
He added that Sentinel “publishes books so that people can read them, and evaluate them on their own. In an intelligent free society we need to disseminate ideas in a robust form so that we can discuss them.” He said Sentinel is honored to publish a book by a sitting Supreme Court justice.
Zackheim said the book is still being written and would likely be published in 2024.
Barrett’s book deal was first reported in April 2021. Politico reported at the time that Barrett had a deal for a book about how judges should avoid letting their decisions be impacted by personal feelings.
“The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health that overturned Roe hinged on exactly what Coney Barrett’s book is reportedly about—the judiciary’s role and ‘how judges are not supposed to bring their personal feelings into how they rule,’” the letter said. “Yet, it seems this is exactly what Coney Barrett has done, inflicting her own religious and moral agenda upon all Americans while appropriating the rhetoric of even-handedness—and Penguin Random House has agreed to pay her a sum of $2 million to do it.”
The letter argues that publishing the book would violate both Penguin Random House’s Code of Conduct and international human rights.
“This is not just a book that we disagree with, and we are not calling for censorship,” the letter said. “Many of us work daily with books we find disagreeable to our personal politics. Rather, this is a case where a corporation has privately funded the destruction of human rights with obscene profits. Coney Barrett is free to say as she wishes, but Penguin Random House must decide whether to fund her position at the expense of human rights in order to inflate its bottom line, or to truly stand behind the values it proudly espouses to hold.”
