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ketanji brown jackson
Justice Jackson Condemns Supreme Court's Decision to Fast-Track Louisiana Electoral Map Ruling
The Monday evening decision "is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map."
May 05, 2026
Warning that the US Supreme Court's right-wing majority was appearing to give its approval of Louisiana's decision to suspend federal primary elections in the state following the court's ruling on the state's congressional map last week, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday evening was the lone dissenter as the court agreed to immediately finalize the ruling instead of waiting the customary 32 days.
By expediting the ruling, suggested Jackson, the court was taking an obviously political stance in support of efforts to ensure Louisiana Republicans can quickly redraw the state's congressional map to yield more electoral wins for the GOP.
"The court’s decision to buck our usual practice," wrote Jackson, "is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map."
Ordinarily, the court would wait 32 days to transmit an opinion to the lower courts, giving the losing party time to request that the justices reconsider the case.
In a brief, unsigned opinion Monday evening, the court said that the Black voters who had defended the state's 2024 congressional map at the center of Louisiana v. Callais had "not expressed any intent to ask this court to reconsider its judgment.”
In Louisiana v. Callais last week, the court ruled along ideological lines that the 2024 map—which was drawn to better represent the population of Louisiana, where one-third of residents are Black—was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The ruling effectively struck down the last remaining provision of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which held that voters of color can challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps.
The map that was struck down ensured there were two majority-minority districts in the state. Louisiana's Republican-controlled legislature is expected to try to eliminate at least one of those districts, with a new map yielding five Republicans and one Democrat in the US House.
In transmitting last week's ruling to the lower courts without delay, the court granted a request from the group of white voters who had challenged the state's map.
"Because it is for the District Court to either draw an interim remedial map or approve a legislative remedy, jurisdiction should be returned to the District Court as soon as possible so that it can oversee an orderly process," wrote the plaintiffs.
The Supreme Court granted the plaintiffs' request days after Republican Gov. Jeff Landry took executive action to suspend the state's US House primaries in an effort to ensure they take place after the new map is drawn.
That action, wrote Jackson on Monday, had "a strong political undercurrent" that the court's latest move appeared to openly endorse.
"Louisiana’s hurried response to the Callais decision unfolds in the midst of an ongoing statewide election, against the backdrop of a pitched redistricting battle among state governments that appear to be acting as proxies for their favored political parties," wrote Jackson, noting that the court has only expedited a decision twice in the last 25 years. "As always, the court has a choice... To avoid the appearance of partiality here, we could, as per usual, opt to stay on the sidelines and take no position by applying our default procedures."
"But, today, the court chooses the opposite. Not content to have decided the law, it now takes steps to influence its implementation," she wrote.
John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said that the court was going against its practice of following the "Purcell doctrine," which came out of a 2006 Supreme Court order and holds that "courts should not change voting or election rules too close to an election in order to avoid confusion for voters and election officials alike."
The Supreme Court, said Bisognano, "decided to inject itself into an ongoing election and at this point no one can say otherwise."
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With Food Banks in 'Disaster Response Mode,' Supreme Court Lets Trump Pause SNAP Funds
"This is insane," said US Rep. Pramila Jayapal. "Trump is jumping through hoops to block SNAP."
Nov 08, 2025
The US Supreme Court late Friday temporarily blocked a lower court order that required the Trump administration to fully fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits as the government shutdown drags on with no end in sight.
One wrinkle in the case is that the Supreme Court order, which came after the Trump administration appealed the lower court directive, was handed down by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Her brief order came after the Massachusetts-based US Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit opted not to swiftly intervene in the case.
Jackson, who is tasked with handling emergency issues from the 1st Circuit, wrote that her administrative stay in the case will end 48 hours after the appeals court issues a ruling in the case.
The justice's order came after states across the US had already begun distributing SNAP benefits after a district court judge directed the Trump administration to release billions of dollars in funds by Friday.
"Some people woke up Friday with the money already on the debit-like EBT cards they use to buy groceries," NPR reported.
Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, wrote Friday that "it may surprise folks that Justice Jackson, who has been one of the most vocal critics of the court's behavior on emergency applications from the Trump administration, acquiesced in even a temporary pause of the district court's ruling in this case."
He continued:
But as I read the order, which says a lot more than a typical “administrative stay” from the Court, Jackson was stuck between a rock and a hard place—given the incredibly compressed timing that was created by the circumstances of the case.
In a world in which Justice Jackson either knew or suspected that at least five of the justices would grant temporary relief to the Trump administration if she didn’t, the way she structured the stay means that she was able to try to control the timing of the Supreme Court’s (forthcoming) review—and to create pressure for it to happen faster than it otherwise might have. In other words, it’s a compromise—one with which not everyone will agree, but which strikes me as eminently defensible under these unique (and, let’s be clear, maddening and entirely f-ing avoidable) circumstances.
The Trump administration has fought tooth and nail to flout its legal obligation to distribute SNAP funds during the shutdown as low-income Americans grow increasingly desperate and food bank demand skyrockets.
"This is insane," US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote after the administration appealed to the Supreme Court. "Trump is jumping through hoops to block SNAP. Follow the law, fund SNAP, and feed American families."
Maura Healey, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts—one of the states that quickly moved to process SNAP benefits following the district court order—said in a statement that "Trump should never have put the American people in this position."
"Families shouldn’t have had to go hungry because their president chose to put politics over their lives," said Healey.
Feeding America, a nonprofit network of hundreds of food banks across the US, said Friday that food banks bought nearly 325% more food through the organization's grocery purchase program during the week of October 27 than they did at the same time last year.
Donations to food banks, which were underresourced even prior to the shutdown, have also skyrocketed. The head of a Houston food bank said the organization is in "disaster response mode."
"Across the country, communities are feeling the real, human impact the shutdown is having on their neighbors and communities,” said Linda Nageotte, president and chief operating officer at Feeding America. "Families, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities are showing strength through the hardship, and their communities are standing beside them—giving their time and money, and advocating so no one faces hunger alone.”
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Supreme Court Allows Trump to Impose Anti-Trans Passport Policy
“This decision will cause immediate, widespread, and irreparable harm to all those who are being denied accurate identity documents,” said a lawyer for the ACLU.
Nov 06, 2025
The US Supreme Court issued an emergency order Thursday upholding President Donald Trump's discriminatory policy barring transgender and nonbinary Americans from changing the gender listed on their passports from the gender assigned to them at birth.
Reversing a lower court decision blocking the policy in June, the six conservative justices assessed in an unsigned majority opinion that by requiring passports to reflect a person's sex at birth, the State Department "is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissent, which was joined by the two other liberals, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonya Sotomayor. Lamenting the Trump administration's "routine" reliance on the court to issue emergency rulings, Brown wrote that she would have denied the request, because “the documented real-world harms to these plaintiffs obviously outweigh the government’s unexplained (and inexplicable) interest in immediate implementation of the passport policy.”
Last month, a group of transgender and nonbinary plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU, requested that the court reject the Trump administration's petition for a stay on the lower court's ruling blocking the policy. That ruling had come after transgender and nonbinary plaintiffs testified that they were afraid to submit passport applications to the government as a result of the policy.
"Forcing transgender people to carry passports that out them against their will increases the risk that they will face harassment and violence and adds to the considerable barriers they already face in securing freedom, safety, and acceptance," said Jon Davidson, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project.
The attorneys argued last month before the Supreme Court that the policy "irrationally undermines the very purpose of passports—identifying a US citizen when they travel” and also is “motivated by anti-transgender animus.”
That animus has been on display since Trump's first day in office this term, when he signed an executive order declaring that his administration would only recognize “two sexes, male and female," based on one's “biological classification” at birth.
The passport policy has already led to confusion, which the actress Hunter Schafer—a transgender woman—put on display in February, when she was issued a passport that identified her as male in conflict with both her appearance and other legal documents like her driver's license.
“This decision will cause immediate, widespread, and irreparable harm to all those who are being denied accurate identity documents,” said Jessie Rossman, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, following the Supreme Court's ruling Thursday. “The Trump administration's policy is an unlawful attempt to dehumanize, humiliate, and endanger transgender, nonbinary, and intersex Americans, and we will continue to seek its ultimate reversal in the courts.”
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