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By Upholding State Bans on Transgender Athletes, the Supreme Court Bowed to Bigotry
The decision codifies transphobic language and opens the potential for the sex testing of youth athletes.
Jul 03, 2026
In one of its final decisions of the 2025-26 term, the Supreme Court of the United States solidified its place in the onslaught of eradicating trans rights, in a ruling that revolved largely around whether state bans of transgender athletes violated Title IX and the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
In response to the question placed before the court of whether states could implement bans on transgender athlete participation in girls’ and women’s sports, 6 of the 9 justices said, “Yes.”
Outside of patchy citations and contradicting interpretations of legal precedents, the rationale behind the majority opinion of the court, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, echoed three key premises in the “sports context.” First, female bodies are inherently physiologically different from male bodies, which map onto sex-based athletic advantages for males. Second, regardless of these differences, girls and women should have equal opportunities to boys and men. And third, because of these differences and because of equal guarantees between the sexes, “competitive fairness” and “safety” look different for the female category as compared with the male category. Consequently, the only way to ensure equal sporting opportunities for girls and women is to keep transgender girls and women, or “biological males,” out of the female category.
Anti-transgender advocates in the broader “save women’s sports” movement frequently draw from these rationales, but also ignore the underlying deeply problematic and troubling considerations. On an ethical level, this approach undermines inclusive efforts and further stigmatizes transgender individuals. On a public health level, this reasoning deprives an exceptionally vulnerable population from enjoying the social, mental, and physical benefits from physical activity that should be enjoyed by all. And on a pragmatic level, these declarations overlook the minimal number of out transgender youth, of which even fewer participate in high school level sports.
Notably, of all the documented issues in and across women’s sports, there is no evidence demonstrating that transgender athletes, in any way, contribute to these inequalities.
Beyond parroting this tired transphobic logic, the majority opinion also points to other sports governing bodies, such as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, who have “drawn a biological line” to ensure safe and fair competition by banning transgender athletes. What Justice Kavanaugh omits, however, is that both organizations abruptly changed their policies following President Donald Trump’s Executive Order No. 14201, rather than in response to any scientific evidence or domination of transgender athletes (in response to a Senate hearing question about how many transgender athletes compete in the NCAA, NCAA President Charlie Baker infamously responded that of the more than 500,000 athletes competing, he knew of “only 10”).
While this ruling itself does not necessarily come as a surprise to those who have followed along with the US’ steady rollback of transgender rights, perhaps the most shocking element of the SCOTUS’ majority opinion is the brazen use of transphobic and misogynistic language in their ruling. “Biological males” and “biological females,” which are used 64 and 31 times respectively in Justice Kavanaugh’s 29-page majority opinion, are not rooted in medical terminology. Instead, these are terms that have become popularized and mobilized by anti-transgender advocates to reinforce a binary model of sex difference. This type of sex segregation is premised on patriarchal beliefs of male athletic superiority and female athletic inferiority, and has historically led to harmful body policing, racial discrimination, and erasure of intersex persons.
There is also reference to an “ongoing medical and scientific debate” surrounding whether transgender athletes maintain athletic and performative advantages after transitioning. What is absent from this brief discussion of science, however, is the concrete evidence that has shown the abundant health disparities experienced by the transgender community, particularly transgender youth. In 2024, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that, compared with their cisgender counterparts, transgender youth are more likely to report violence, victimization, unstable housing, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Similarly, a 2024 study in Nature Human Behavior found that anti-transgender state laws, including transgender sport participation bans, directly increased incidents of suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth by as much as 72%.
The (mis)direction of attention to abstract ideas of “competitive fairness” and unsettled science also disregards the rampant incompliance of institutions with Title IX. In 2023, Florida State University (FSU) agreed to add women’s lacrosse as a varsity sport after threats of a sexual discrimination lawsuit from its women’s club lacrosse team. The threat came on the heels of an 18-month USA TODAY investigation, which revealed that the university was egregiously out of Title IX compliance. FSU was far from the exception, however, as the investigation exposed how hundreds of colleges and universities manipulated their roster numbers for women’s sports to create a mirage of compliance. These Title IX transgressions emerged under the backdrop of several systemic issues in women’s sports, such as the decline in the number of women coaches for women’s sports, consistent underfunding, disproportionate rates of harassment and abuse experienced by girls and women, and media underrepresentation. Notably, of all the documented issues in and across women’s sports, there is no evidence demonstrating that transgender athletes, in any way, contribute to these inequalities.
Despite these relevant considerations, and as Justice Sonia Sotomayer wrote in her dissent, “to the Court, the facts do not matter, even though the consequences are serious.”
In addition to the immediate impact on transgender athletes, this decision prompts questions around how girls’ and women’s sports will now be policed to “catch” athletes who do not fit within normative assumptions or understandings of female bodies. International sports governing organizations, such as World Athletics and the International Olympic Committee, have recently paired bans on transgender athlete participation with implementations of sex testing via chromosome tests, which has long been established as a fraught, unethical, and discriminatory practice.
The impacts on youth and high school sports are, and will be, more pronounced. Organizations at these levels lack the same resources and financial capacities, meaning that, for high school athletic associations, sex testing would most likely involve some type of genital or physical examination. While these might be conducted by medical personnel (though the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal is evidence that this does not guarantee safeguarding minors), depending on access or finances, these could also be conducted by coaches, other parents, or officials, which prompts further questions and justified concerns surrounding training, confidentiality, consent, and protections of minors. These practices not only impact transgender athletes, but all athletes, regardless of gender identity or, to borrow from Justice Kavanaugh, “biological sex.”
The ruling closes with a half-hearted remark that “no student-athlete on either side of the issue, whether a biological female or transgender, deserves to be ostracized or vilified.” What the SCOTUS fails to recognize, however, is that their ruling is predicated on the misguided vilification of transgender athletes, with impacts that will continue to ostracize transgender people in sports and broader society.
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Supreme Court Gives Trump 'King-Like' Power to Purge Independent Agencies
“Today’s decision in Trump v. Slaughter takes a wrecking ball to a 90-year pillar of American law," said House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin.
Jun 29, 2026
The US Supreme Court on Monday upheld President Donald Trump's firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, overturning 90 years of precedent and giving the chief executive what dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor called "a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted."
Last March, Trump fired Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, the two Democratic FTC commissioners at the time, without cause in what critics called yet another illegal abuse of power by the twice-impeached convicted felon.
Under the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA) of 1914, a president may only fire FTC commissioners "for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office." The Supreme Court's 1935 Humphrey's Executor v. United States ruling interpreted the FTCA to mean that the president could not remove an FTC commissioner for any other reason, such as a policy disagreement.
The justices shredded that precedent with Monday's 6-3 decision in Trump v. Slaughter, which found that "the FTC's for-cause removal provision is contrary to the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution."
BREAKING: The Supreme Court upholds Trump’s firing of FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter without cause.The decision overturns a 90-year-old precedent that protected the heads or board members of independent agencies from arbitrary presidential dismissals. Full story to come.
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— Democracy Docket (@democracydocket.com) June 29, 2026 at 7:20 AM
Chief Justice John Roberts joined fellow conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—the last three appointed by Trump—in the majority, while liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
Delivering the court's opinion, Roberts wrote that the "Humphrey's framework, in short, has not withstood the test of time."
"We long ago abandoned the notion that there are some powers that are only partly executive," the chief justice asserted. "Forty years have now passed, in fact, since we recognized that the FTC exercises executive power—and did so even in 1935, when Humphrey's was decided."
Slaughter and officials at independent executive agencies, Roberts wrote, "exercise the president’s power, not their own, and thus must be responsible to him."
"At this point, all that is left of Humphrey's is its observation that an agency that 'exercises no part of the executive power' need not fall within the rule of presidential removal," he added. "If anything more is left of Humphrey's, we overrule it."
As she did last week with Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, a 6-3 ruling that affirmed Trump's deadly policy of blocking people legally seeking asylum from entering the United States, Sotomayor took the rare step of reading her dissent in Slaughter from the bench.
"Today, this court undoes centuries of political practice and concludes that all three branches of government have been acting in open defiance of the Constitution all this time. Its conclusion is wrong," she asserted. "The text of the Constitution, along with its history, the long-standing practices of the political branches, and the precedents of this court, make clear that Congress may limit the causes for which the heads of commissions like the FTC can be removed by the president."
"In holding otherwise, the court gives the president a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once-coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws," she continued.
"If nothing else, the doctrine of stare decisis, which today’s decision cursorily dismisses, should have made this a profoundly easy case under Humphrey’s," Sotomayor added, referring to the Latin legal term for "to stand by things decided," or precedent.
Responding to the ruling, Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, said that “today’s decision in Trump v. Slaughter takes a wrecking ball to a 90-year pillar of American law and to Congress’ power to create independent expert agencies that serve the will of the American people as expressed in federal law rather than the whimsical political agenda of one president."
“In overturning Congress’ authority to prevent the president from removing the leaders of independent agencies at whim, the court’s right-wing majority has given President Trump sweeping new power to purge Senate-confirmed commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission and other independent agencies for no reason other than personal loyalty, political obedience, or refusal to bend the law to the personal will of the president," Raskin added. "This decision invites presidential domination of the independent agencies Congress created to protect the people against corporate fraud, financial corruption, attacks on workers’ rights, and other abuses of concentrated economic and political power."
Numerous civil society groups and constitutional experts also expressed alarm over Monday's ruling, which follows the high court's previous affirmations of expanded executive power in cases including Trump v. United States. Roberts wrote for the 6-3 majority in that 2024 case that the president enjoys prosecutorial immunity for all "official acts"—which Sotomayor said in her dissent made him "a king above the law."
“Independent agencies are the guardians of American consumers, workers, and investors," Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said of Trump v. Slaughter. "They have held wealthy corporations that rip off hardworking Americans accountable and forced dangerous products from the market. Having stripped most independent agencies of their independence, President Trump is already politicizing and weaponizing them, including agencies such as the FTC and the Federal Communications Commission, to the detriment of everyday Americans.”
At Issue One, a group dedicated to reducing the influence of money in politics, vice president of advocacy Alix Fraser said that “today, the Supreme Court greenlit further abuses of presidential power and stripped independent commissions of their independence."
"The ruling opens the floodgates for more governing decisions based on the president’s whims and self-interest," he added. "This ruling not only subverts the Constitution’s clear guardrails against executive overreach, it also breaks from the court’s historical precedent to uphold the FTC removal provision."
The Slaughter case, overturning precedent, returns us to a spoils system where a president can “clean house” every four years, destroying our professional, independent civil service.
— Barb McQuade (@barbmcquade.bsky.social) June 29, 2026 at 8:31 AM
Leah Greenberg, co-executive director at the pro-democracy group Indivisible, issued a statement calling the ruling "shocking, but sadly not surprising."
"John Roberts and the MAGA majority are willing to set fire to history, precedent, and any consistent constitutional principle in order to give Trump more power with less oversight," she said. "This brazen, undemocratic partisanship and corruption must be investigated, the justices must be held accountable, and the court must be reformed to disempower the current anti-constitutional majority.”
Brett Edkins, managing director of policy and affairs at the anti-corruption watchdog Stand Up America—which said the ruling "opens the door to king-like powers for Trump to fire independent watchdogs and install loyalists throughout government"—lamented that “the MAGA Supreme Court just overturned a century of law to give more power to Donald Trump."
"Trump couldn’t find a lawful reason to fire a member of an independent agency, so he ignored the law, fired them anyway, and turned to his allies on the Supreme Court to reward his gross abuses of executive power," he continued. "His lackeys on the court obliged."
“Today’s ruling hands Trump sweeping power to purge independent watchdogs and install loyalists throughout the US government who will answer to him alone," Edkins added.
Republicans have long sought a repeal of Humphrey's. Project 2025—the Heritage Foundation-led blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government—calls for the ruling to be overturned.
Trump welcomed Monday's decision with a post on his Truth Social network claiming that he personally "won" the ruling.
Monday's decision means Trump will now be able to fire at will leaders from agencies including the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, National Labor Relations Board, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and US Postal Service.
But not the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. That's because in a separate but related ruling released on Monday, the justices rejected Trump's attempt to oust Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook, finding 5-4 in Trump v. Cook that his bid to fire her did not comply with the Federal Reserve Act's for-cause removal protections.
“The court’s decision in Slaughter is all the more peculiar in light of... Trump v. Cook," Raskin said in his statement."There, the court rightly rejected President Trump’s lawless attempt to fire Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook without adequate cause, due process, or judicial review."
While acknowledging that "central bank independence matters immensely to the American economy," Raskin contended that "Congress' constitutional judgments about the necessity of institutional independence should matter just as much at the FTC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Communications Commission, and the many other important independent agencies Congress has created to serve the interests of the American people."
Humphrey's Executor is dead and the president can fire anyone in the executive branch at will but NOT Federal Reserve governors is really a parody of the difference between the money power and everything else in America
— David Dayen (@ddayen.bsky.social) June 29, 2026 at 7:20 AM
Indivisible's Greenberg said that “the carveout for the Federal Reserve only shows how grossly political" the Slaughter decision is.
"Apparently, independence only matters when financial markets are at stake," she added, "but not when agencies are protecting consumers, workers, or the public from corporate abuse."
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'More People Will Die': Sotomayor Reads Searing Dissent as Supreme Court Lets Trump Block Asylum Seekers
The liberal justice lamented that the majority ruling in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado empowers the Trump administration to slam the door shut on refugees "even if the asylum seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed."
Jun 25, 2026
The US Supreme Court's right-wing majority on Thursday affirmed the Trump administration's deadly policy of blocking people legally seeking asylum from entering the United States in a ruling that prompted liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor to take the rare step of reading her dissent from the bench.
In Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the justices reversed lower-court rulings, including a 2024 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel decision that people approaching authorized border entries are arriving "in" the United States under federal law.
The Trump administration had asked the Supreme Court to rule on the practice of "metering," by which US authorities limit the number of asylum seekers who can present themselves at a port of entry each day to request protection. The policy was first implemented during the Obama administration and expanded during President Donald Trump's first term, with US Solicitor General D. John Sauer calling it “a critical tool for addressing border surges and for preventing overcrowding at ports of entry along the border.”
“In ordinary English, a person ‘arrives in’ a country only when he comes within its borders,” Sauer argued in court filings. “An alien thus does not ‘arrive in’ the United States while he is still in Mexico.”
Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote for the majority—Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Clarence Thomas, and Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—agreed.
“In ordinary speech, no one would say that a person ‘arrives in’ a place—for example, a house, a city, or a country—before the person enters that place," Justice Samuel Alito said.
“We hold that an alien who is standing in Mexico does not ‘arrive in the United States’ by attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country," he added. "An alien ‘arrives in the United States’ only when he crosses the border."
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined a scathing dissent penned by fellow liberal Sonia Sotomayor. Jackson also dissented separately. In a sign of her vigorous objection to the ruling, Sotomayor took the rare step of reading parts of her 35-page dissent—which is nearly twice as long as the majority opinion—from the bench.
"The Court today holds that the Executive Branch may circumvent all these mandatory procedures by having US immigration officers stand at the border and physically block noncitizens from setting a foot onto US soil," Sotomayor began. "They may do so even if the asylum seeker is at the threshold of a port of entry designated to receive all noncitizens who seek entrance into the country. Even if the port of entry has ample capacity to inspect that person, including an available asylum officer trained to process asylum applications. Even if the asylum seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed, if she is turned away."
Sotomayor noted that metering "created dire humanitarian conditions at the border."
As US Customs and Border Protection "turned back more and more asylum seekers who had traveled treacherous distances to reach that point, makeshift camps sprung up on the Mexican side of the border, with tens of thousands of those turned away waiting days, then weeks and months, for asylum processing that often never took place," she continued.
Sotomayor noted the dangerous conditions in the border camps, asserting that "those turned away under the metering policy also found themselves subject to the very 'persecution and crime' they were fleeing," and citing cases in which people waiting in Mexico were murdered, raped, kidnapped, and assaulted. She detailed instances in which desperate asylum seekers, including children, drowned while attempting to swim across the Rio Grande into the United States.
"Hundreds of others have met a similar fate, and many more died crossing the desert along the southern border, all making 2020 and 2021 some of the 'deadliest years for migrant crossings' in various regions of the southern border," Sotomayor wrote.
"The words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme."
"The majority’s conclusion focuses almost exclusively on the word 'in' within the phrase 'arrives in the United States,'" Sotomayor stressed. "If that were all this case were about, the majority might have the better of the argument. Statutory interpretation, however, requires much more."
"The words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme," she continued, pointing to one of the most frequently cited principles in modern US jurisprudence.
"The majority’s interpretation of 'arrives in the United States' makes no sense," Sotomayor argued. "To start, the majority ignores that 'arrival' and 'arriving' in the immigration context have never focused on the precise location of a noncitizen’s feet."
She continued:
Imagine a movie theater policy that states, “Anyone who arrives in the theater may buy a ticket and all moviegoers must have their tickets scanned before entering.” If a person walks up to a ticket booth located just outside the theater, it would be unreasonable to think they could not buy a ticket under the policy because they are not “in” the theater yet. Perhaps the policy could have been clearer by using the preposition “at,” but everyone understands, from context, what the policy means.
Context leads to the same conclusion here. Requiring an asylum seeker to plant a foot across the border to become an “applicant for admission"... might be plausible looking at the words “arrives in” in a vacuum, but it makes a hash of the statutory scheme overall. Instead, construing text in context, an asylum seeker can be fairly said to “arrive in the United States” for purposes of being an applicant for admission and seeking asylum when she walks up to a port of entry and physically presents herself to an immigration officer who is standing on US soil.
Sotomayor further noted that the modern asylum system "developed in response to the international moral reckoning that followed the Holocaust and World War II," when the United States and other indifferent nations turned back shiploads of desperate Jewish refugees and denied asylum to Jews fleeing almost certain death in Nazi-occupied Europe, including the family of famous diarist Anne Frank.
The dissenting justice highlighted the ill-fated voyage of the M.S. St. Louis, which carried over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. After being refused docking in Cuba, the United States, and Canada, the ship returned to Europe, where hundreds of its passengers were killed during the Holocaust.
"Congress passed the Refugee Act in 1980 because it did not want this country to repeat the mistakes of its past," Sotomayor said. "Yet if the refugees on the M.S. St. Louis were to walk up to a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority’s interpretation would allow immigration officers to refuse even to consider their asylum applications by physically blocking them from stepping foot onto US soil."
"The majority’s interpretation permits the government to do that even if the refugees complied with all applicable laws and regulations, even if the port had ample capacity to inspect them, and even if turning them back would result in the very persecution from which they narrowly escaped," she added. "The consequences of today’s decision are predictable. More people will die."
In another extraordinary move, Alito followed Sotomayor's reading by defending the metering policy as necessary for maintaining "orderly and humane" conditions at the border. He then moved on to his next opinion, which upheld the Trump administration's cancellation of temporary deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians.
Responding to the Mullin ruling, Al Otro Lado executive director Erika Pinheiro said, "We believe that today’s ruling violates international law, as well as the express intent of Congress, which enshrined the rights and obligations of the Refugee Convention into US federal law over 40 years ago."
"For decades, the United States has allowed individuals and families who are fleeing persecution, torture, and death to ask for protection at US borders and exercise their legal right to seek asylum,” she continued. "This decision has destroyed the United States’ position as a global leader in promoting the rights of refugees and threatens to serve as a dangerous justification for other countries that unlawfully prevent refugees from crossing borders in search of safety."
"In a world of increasing conflict and climate disaster, this hardening of borders to keep out the most vulnerable is sure to result in many more lives lost," Pinheiro added.
Today, the Supreme Court delivered a devastating blow to asylum rights in the United States.In a 6-3 decision in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, the Court ruled that the Trump administration may turn back asylum seekers at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border.
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— American Immigration Council (@immcouncil.org) June 25, 2026 at 9:32 AM
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, also issued a statement, contending that the two rulings "will devastate women and children who are fleeing unimaginable danger, vetted workers who have been in the US for decades making significant contributions, senior citizens who depend on their healthcare providers for lifesaving care, and business owners who rely on their workers to sustain their businesses, among many others."
Congresswoman Analilia Mejia (D-NJ) said that "whether denying asylum seekers the chance to be heard or ripping Temporary Protected Status away from families who have spent years building their lives in this country, this corrupt court, beholden to an authoritarian-like president, once again chose politics over the Constitution."
"Asylum seekers deserve the opportunity to have their claims heard before the government decides their fate," she continued. "Above all else, this case is simply cruel and denies humanity to our fellow human beings seeking safety."
"These rulings should alarm every American," Mejia added. "When the government can deny one group a hearing or strip away protections they have relied on for years, it is not just immigrants who lose. It sends a dangerous message that constitutional rights can be discarded whenever those in power find it politically useful."
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that by targeting asylum, the justices "are preventing the most vulnerable people from even seeking safety on our shores."
On social media, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said, "This extremist Supreme Court just gave Trump the green light to block asylum seekers at the border and end TPS protections for Haitians and Syrians."
"People fleeing danger deserve compassion, not cruelty," Lee added. "We must reform and expand the court immediately."
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As Tennessee Voters Sue Over Gerrymandering, Supreme Court Clears Way for New Alabama Map
"Boy, it's a complete mystery why the public thinks the court is making partisan political decisions," quipped one law professor following the ruling on Alabama's redistricting.
May 11, 2026
The US Supreme Court's right-wing majority Monday opened the door for Alabama to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district before this year's midterm elections in a decision that came as Tennessee voters sued to stop their state's racially rigged redistricting.
The nation's high court issued a 6-3 order with no explanation allowing Alabama officials to revert to a congressional map which, despite the state population being roughly 26% African American, has just one majority-Black district out of seven. The order came just a week before Alabama's primary election and less than three years after the same court ordered the state to create a second majority-Black district.
In that case, Allen v. Milligan, two right-wing members—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh—joined their liberal colleagues who sided with Black voters in defense of the Voting Rights Act.
SCOTUS, which ordered Alabama to create a second Black opportunity district just 3 years ago, has lifted that order a week before the primary. The Purcell principle says courts shouldn't permit chaos too close to an election—it's now an open question whether there will even be a primary on schedule.
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— Joyce White Vance (@joycewhitevance.bsky.social) May 11, 2026 at 3:32 PM
Monday's ruling follows last month's Louisiana v. Callais decision, in which the justices ruled 6-3, also along ideological lines, that Louisiana's congressional map is “an unconstitutional racial gerrymander."
The decision ironically voided the last remaining provision of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows voters of color to challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps in court.
Dissenting in Monday's decision, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that the high court previously found that "Alabama violated the 14th Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of Black voters."
"That constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of, and unaffected by, any of the legal issues discussed in Callais," she added.
Earlier on Monday, the ACLU and ACLU of Tennessee filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of three Black voters, the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, the Memphis A. Philip Randolph Institute, and the Equity Alliance seeking to block the state's racially rigged congressional map approved last week by the state Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee despite tremendous opposition from African American Tennesseans and their allies.
The lawsuit argues that the new map violates the Constitution by intentionally discriminating against Black voters in Memphis and retaliates against them for exercising their First Amendment right to political expression and association.
As the ACLU of Tennessee explained:
Tennessee has had a Memphis-based congressional district for the better part of a century. The challenged map dismantles that district, which is the state’s only majority-Black congressional district. It divides Black voters in Memphis and Shelby County across three majority-white districts that stretch from Memphis hundreds of miles into central Tennessee, diluting Black Memphians’ votes and stripping those communities of any meaningful voice in Congress...
A white-controlled supermajority of the Tennessee General Assembly enacted the new map targeting Black Memphians over mere days in a special legislative session that had been called after the candidate-qualifying deadline had already run.
"Black voters in Memphis did exactly what the Constitution empowers every American to do, which is to choose their representative,” ACLU of Tennessee executive director Miriar Nemeth said in a statement. “The Legislature’s response was an effort to ensure that those votes never carry the same weight again. The law has a name for this, and it’s not redistricting, it is textbook First Amendment retaliation. And it is, at its heart, racism.”
The Tennessee branch of the NAACP, state Democratic Party, Democratic candidates, and voters have also sued to challenge the redistricting.
The current partisan redistricting war began when President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, who fear losing control of Congress after November's midterms, pushed Texas to enact a mid-decade redistricting. California retaliated with its own voter-approved redraw, and numerous red and blue states have followed suit or announced plans to at least consider doing so.
On Monday, Virginia's Democratic attorney general and party legislative leaders asked the US Supreme Court to block a state high court ruling against a voter-approved redistricting that favors Democrats.
Last week, Roberts dismissed the increasingly prevalent public perception that Supreme Court justices are "political actors."
Chief Justice Roberts bemoans the public's view of the Justices as political actors ...and then offers no explanation at all as the Court sprints to vacate a finding of INTENTIONAL discrimination, interfering with an impending election to let Alabama Rs sneak in a touch more partisan gerrymander.
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— Justin Levitt (@justinlevitt.bsky.social) May 11, 2026 at 3:21 PM
Following Monday's ruling, Loyola Law School professor Justin Levitt said sardonically on Bluesky, "Boy, it's a complete mystery why the public thinks the court is making partisan political decisions."
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As Sotomayor Apologizes to Kavanaugh, Thomas Paints Progressives as Existential Threat
"Cowering liberals think this is a manners contest while conservatives are waging an ideological war," said one observer.
Apr 16, 2026
While one liberal US Supreme Court justice apologized Wednesday for mildly condescending remarks about a colleague, one of the high court's most right-wing members compared progressives to the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler—a contrast that one prominent observer called "a perfect commentary on the asymmetry in politics" between liberals and the MAGA right.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she apologized for "inappropriate" public comments about Justice Brett Kavanaugh's upbringing during an April 7 speech at the University of Kansas School of Law. Sotomayor, who grew up in financial poverty in the Bronx, referred to Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, in which the son of high-powered Washington, DC attorneys brushed off the potentially fatal consequences of immigration enforcement stops.
“This is from a man whose parents were professionals," Sotomayor told the audience, "and probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”
Meanwhile on Wednesday, Justice Clarence Thomas linked the progressive movement—which Americans have to thank for many of the rights they have today, from the five-day, 40-hour workweek, to food safety and environmental protection, to near-universal civil and voting rights—with some of the 20th century's worst mass murderers.
"Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government," Thomas told attendees of a University of Texas event commemorating the 250th anniversary of the document's signing. "It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from government."
Thomas called the declaration "one of the greatest anti-slavery documents in the history of the Western civilization," even though its proclamation that "all men are created equal" did not apply to the 20% of the American population who were enslaved Blacks, and a condemnation of slavery was stricken from the draft due to objections from slave owners.
However, Thomas argued that the ideals in the Declaration of Independence have "fallen out of favor" among progressives.
"Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement, with the possible exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War, to openly oppose the principles of the declaration" Thomas asserted. "Progressives strove to undo the declaration's commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident."
"It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights," he continued, adding that it "led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen."
"Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our declaration are based," Thomas added, referring to Soviet leader Josef Stalin, the Nazi leader, and Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong.
Balls and Strikes editor-in-chief Jay Willis responded to Thomas' remarks on Bluesky, writing that it is "genuinely funny that Sonia Sotomayor issued a public apology today for her mild criticism of a conservative colleague on a specific, substantive issue, and then a few hours later Clarence Thomas picked up a mic and was like ALL LIBERALS ARE AMERICA-HATING COWARDS."
"Clarence Thomas is a right-wing freak," Willis added. "This is an indistinguishable from what unironic retvrn guys post on X about, like, women being allowed to have bank accounts. Anyone who tells you he is a profound thinker or a serious jurist or whatever is not to be trusted."
Journalist Mehdi Hasan said on X that "if Dems had a spine, they’d run on impeaching this financially corrupt justice who got away with the allegations of sexual harassment during his hearings."
Many right-wingers, meanwhile, applauded Thomas' remarks, with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)—who helped try to steal the 2020 election for President Donald Trump—posting on X that "progressivism *is* an existential threat to America."
During his speech, Thomas also expressed his admiration for Harlan Crow, the Republican megadonor whose largesse to the justice and his wife Virginia—who was also involved in efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election—has included undisclosed gifts like luxury vacations and private school tuition for a relative.
He also praised John Yoo, his former clerk and senior Justice Department lawyer who authored the infamous "torture memos" for the George W. Bush administration and publicly argued that the president has the power to order the massacre of an entire village of civilians or the crushing of a child's testicles.
Thomas closed his speech with a call to action.
"Each of you will have opportunities to be courageous every day," he said. "It may mean speaking up in class tomorrow when someone around you expects you to live by lies. It may mean confronting today's fashionable bigotries, such as antisemitism. It may mean standing up for your religion when it is mocked and disparaged by a professor."
"It may mean not budging on your principles when it will entail losing friends or being ostracized," he continued. "It may mean running for your school board when you see that they are teaching your children to hate your values and our country. It may mean turning down a job offer that requires you to make moral or ethical compromises."
This, from a justice on the nation's highest court whose moral and ethical compromises in the form of “the number, value, and extravagance of the gifts" he took from a billionaire linked to a case before that same court has "no comparison in modern American history," according to a Senate report.
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'Now Imagine... You Are Suffocating': Sotomayor's Graphic Dissent Over Nitrogen Gas Execution
The liberal justice accused the majority of turning their back "on the Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment."
Oct 24, 2025
US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was unable to convince the right-wing majority of the nation's highest court on Thursday night to accept a last-ditch petition from a man slated to be killed by the state of Alabama asking that he be put to death by firing squad as opposed to the more brutal and painful method of asphyxiation from nitrogen gas, a torturous process of execution experts have said amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
Anthony Boyd, convicted of a 1993 murder and kidnapping, which he maintained until the end that he did not commit, was put to death by the state of Alabama using nitrogen gas after a request for a stay of execution and a review of a lower appeals court ruling was rejected in a 6-3 decision.
In the first four paragraphs of her dissent, backed by Justices Elana Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor departed from the majority by asking people to put themselves inside the death chamber with the mask of nitrogen strapped to their face:
Take out your phone, go to the clock app, and find the stopwatch. Click start. Now watch the seconds as they climb. Three seconds come and go in a blink. At the thirty-second mark, your mind starts to wander. One minute passes, and you begin to think that this is taking a long time. Two . . . three . . . . The clock ticks on. Then, finally, you make it to four minutes. Hit stop.
Now imagine for that entire time, you are suffocating. You want to breathe; you have to breathe. But you are strapped to a gurney with a mask on your face pumping your lungs with nitrogen gas. Your mind knows that the gas will kill you. But your body keeps telling you to breathe.
That is what awaits Anthony Boyd tonight. For two to four minutes, Boyd will remain conscious while the State of Alabama kills him in this way. When the gas starts flowing, he will immediately convulse. He will gasp for air. And he will thrash violently against the restraints holding him in place as he experiences this intense psychological tor- ment until he finally loses consciousness. Just short of twenty minutes later, Boyd will be declared dead.
Boyd asks for the barest form of mercy: to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to four minutes. The Constitution would grant him that grace. My colleagues do not. This Court thus turns its back on Boyd and on the Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. Because the Court should have instead granted a stay of execution and Boyd’s petition for certiorari, I respectfully dissent.
Last year, a body of experts at the United Nations urgently pleaded with US officials to put a stop to the death penalty by nitrogen hypoxia, calling it "clearly prohibited under international law." The experts cited the killing of Kenneth Smith by the state of Alabama in February of 2024 as the "first person ever to be executed in this way," a death which reportedly took more than 20 minutes as Smith "writhed and convulsed on the gurney."
The wife of another man executed by this method—approved by seven states, but only put to use so far by Alabama and Louisiana—said watching her husband be killed this way was like “watching someone drown without water.”
Citing the seven times the method had been used before Boyd, Sotomayor said there is now a clear record of the intense pain and unnecessary suffering experienced by people put to death in this manner. All the killings, she wrote, resulted in a similar experience: "apparent consciousness for minutes, not seconds; and violent convulsing, eyes bulging, consistent thrashing against the restraints, and clear gasping for the air that will not come."
While the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution “does not guarantee a prisoner a painless death," argued Sotomayor, "when a State introduces an experimental method of execution that superadds psychological terror as a necessary feature of its successful completion, courts should enforce the Eighth Amendment’s mandate against cruel and unusual punishment."
She called for Boyd to be spared the excruciating death, given that a less cruel and painful alternative was readily available, and an end to the use of nitrogen hypoxia nationwide. While Kagan and Jackson agreed, the other six justices allowed the execution to proceed.
Before he was killed, according to CBS News, Boyd pleaded his innocence for a final time on Thursday. "I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t participate in killing anybody,” he said. “There can be no justice until we change this system.”
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With the Perdomo Decision, the Supreme Court's Republicans Are Enablers of Racism
The shadow-docket ruling means ICE will be free to ramp up its roving masked raids in Los Angeles and other cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. There are no longer any safe zones.
Sep 19, 2025
In what may be its most reactionary ruling since Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court decided on September 8 to allow the Trump administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to resume overt racial profiling in immigration raids in Los Angeles. The raids, which began in June under the title of Operation At Large, have resulted in some 5,000 arrests.
The order was handed down in the case of Noem v. Perdomo on the court’s emergency, or “shadow,” docket, which consists of cases decided on an expedited basis—without comprehensive briefing and without oral arguments—outside of the normal “merits docket.” The order lifts a lower-court injunction that had barred the administration from detaining suspected undocumented immigrants based solely on their ethnicity, language, geographic location, and occupations.
Like most shadow docket rulings, the Perdomo order is bare-bones, comprising a single paragraph that fails to explain the court’s rationale for its decision. Nonetheless, it sends a clear message: If you are Latino, you’d better start carrying your identification papers with you—and they had better be in order. Otherwise, you will be subject to detention, and you might just find yourself on a deportation flight to El Salvador, South Sudan, or Uganda.
The Perdomo litigation originated with a lawsuit filed on behalf of a group of immigration advocacy organizations and five individuals, including two US citizens who contend they were detained by ICE during Operation At Large in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. On July 11, Los Angeles District Court Judge Maame E. Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order against the administration, finding that a “mountain of evidence” supported the plaintiffs’ claims that “roving patrols” of masked federal agents were conducting indiscriminate and sometimes violent dragnet-style immigration raids of workplaces and communities.
The court’s quick overturning of Frimpong’s TRO comes as no surprise. Although the court has a long history of entertaining emergency appeals that bypass the normal appeals process—such as last-minute requests for stays of execution in death penalty cases—no president has relied on the shadow docket more than Donald Trump. According to Georgetown University law professor and shadow docket scholar Steve Vladeck, the first Trump administration sought emergency relief 41 times. By comparison, the George W. Bush and Obama administrations filed a combined total of eight emergency relief requests over a 16-year period while the Biden administration filed 19 applications across four years.
During its recently completed 2024-25 term, the court’s shadow docket exploded to more than 100 cases, fueled by the second Trump administration’s authoritarian power grab. In addition to Perdomo, the court has issued pro-Trump shadow docket orders permitting noncitizens to be deported to third-party countries with histories of egregious human rights violations; barring transgender people from serving in the military; withholding $65 million in teacher training grants to states that include diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in their operations and curriculums; and endorsing the Department of Government Efficiency’s access to Social Security Administration records, to cite just a few instances.
And while shadow docket decisions are technically “interim” in nature—operating to remand cases to the lower courts for additional proceedings and leaving space for a possible return to the Supreme Court—they have enduring practical consequences. Unless and until the Supreme Court takes up the Perdomo case again, for example, ICE will be free to ramp up its roving masked raids in Los Angeles and other cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. There are no longer any safe zones.
Of the high court’s six Republican ideologues, only Brett Kavanaugh explained his reasoning in Perdomo. In a poorly crafted opinion filled with misstatements of fact and law, Kavanaugh cited provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act and a 1975 Supreme Court case (United States v. Brignoni-Ponce) that authorize immigration agents to briefly detain and question individuals if they have a “reasonable suspicion” (less than probable cause but more than a hunch) that the person being questioned is an alien illegally in the country. From there, however, Kavanaugh dropped the proverbial ball by remarking, without any citations to the trial court’s evidentiary record:
The Government estimates that at least 15 million people are in the United States illegally. Many millions illegally entered (or illegally overstayed) just in the last few years.
Illegal immigration is especially pronounced in the Los Angeles area, among other locales in the United States. About 10% of the people in the Los Angeles region are illegally in the United States—meaning about 2 million illegal immigrants out of a total population of 20 million.
Not surprisingly given those extraordinary numbers, US immigration officers have prioritized immigration enforcement in the Los Angeles area. The Government sometimes makes brief investigative stops to check the immigration status of those who gather in locations where people are hired for day jobs; who work or appear to work in jobs such as construction, landscaping, agriculture, or car washes that often do not require paperwork and are therefore attractive to illegal immigrants; and who do not speak much if any English. If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a US citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go. If the individual is illegally in the United States, the officers may arrest the individual and initiate the process for removal.
Given what he took for granted as the outsized illegal alien population in greater Los Angeles, Kavanaugh reasoned that it is “common sense” (his words, trust me) for ICE agents to detain any Latinos who fit the government’s criteria of suspicion based on their race, language, or employment in low wage jobs.
In a blistering 21-page dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by fellow Democrats Elena Kaga and Ketanji Brown Jackson, took Kavanaugh to school, instructing the former Yale frat boy that the reasonable suspicion standard requires:
“… an individualized suspicion that a particular citizen was engaged in a particular crime” beyond just a “demographic profile...”
The Fourth Amendment thus prohibits exactly what the Government is attempting to do here: seize individuals based solely on a set of facts that ‘describe[s] a very large category of presumably innocent’ people… As the District Court correctly held, the four factors [the administration relies on]—apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, location, and type of work—are no more indicative of illegal presence in the country than of legal presence.
Sotomayor also educated Kavanaugh on the harsh on-the-ground realities of Operation At Large, noting several examples from the trial court record of violence and intimidation. In the LA suburb of Glendale, for instance:
…nearly a dozen masked agents with guns “jumped out of… cars” at a Home Depot, and began “chasing and tackl[ing] Latino day laborers without “identify[ing] themselves as ICE or police, ask[ing] questions, or say[ing] anything else… In downtown Los Angeles, agents “jumped out of a van, rushed up to [a tamale vendor], surrounded him, and handled him violently,” all “[w]ithout asking… any questions.
In still another Home Depot encounter drawn from the evidentiary record, masked agents wearing bulletproof vests got out of a car and tear-gassed a crowd that had gathered to witness a raid. Far from being polite and respectful, Sotomayor continued, Operation At Large has sparked “panic and fear” across Los Angeles and its surrounding areas. “Countless people in the Los Angeles area,” she observed, “have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor.”
The Fourth Amendment, she reminded her Republican colleagues, “protects every individual’s constitutional right to be free from arbitrary interference by law officers.” Sadly, she concluded, after the Perdomo ruling, “that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little.”
As a Supreme Court justice constrained by the need for collegiality on the bench, Sotomayor stopped short of denouncing Kavanaugh and the court’s Republicans as enablers of racism. There is no reason for the rest of us to feel so reserved.
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Sotomayor: Supreme Court Expedites Trump 'Lawlessness' With Education Department Decision
"That decision is indefensible," the justice wrote. "It hands the executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out."
Jul 14, 2025
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday delivered a blistering dissent to an emergency decision that enables President Donald Trump to plow ahead with laying off nearly 1,400 employees at the Department of Education while a case challenging the plan plays out.
"This case arises out of the president's unilateral efforts to eliminate a Cabinet-level agency established by Congress nearly half a century ago," wrote Sotomayor, joined by her liberals, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. "As Congress mandated, the department plays a vital role in this nation's education system, safeguarding equal access to learning and channeling billions of dollars to schools and students across the country each year."
"Only Congress has the power to abolish the department," she continued, calling out Trump's executive order and Education Secretary Linda McMahon's subsequent move to fire half the agency's workforce. "When the executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the judiciary's duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it."
Sotomayor explained that "two lower courts rose to the occasion, preliminarily enjoining the mass firings while the litigation remains ongoing. Rather than maintain the status quo, however, this court now intervenes, lifting the injunction and permitting the government to proceed with dismantling the department."
"That decision is indefensible," she argued. "It hands the executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution's separation of powers is grave. Unable to join in this misuse of our emergency docket, I respectfully dissent."
If a Democratic president declared his intention to unilaterally shut down the Department of Homeland Security, then attempted to transfer or shutter its key offices and decimate its workforce, does anyone seriously think this Supreme Court would let him?
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— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 3:51 PM
The high court's right-wing majority—which includes three Trump appointees—did not write an opinion, as is customary for shadow docket decisions. The administration responded by pledging to proceed with its efforts to eviscerate the department.
"It is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution," McMahon said in a statement. "We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most – to students, parents, and teachers."
Supreme Court says the president can’t abolish student debt, but he CAN abolish the Department of Education.This isn’t hypocrisy. It’s end times fascism—a fatalistic politics willing torch the government and incinerate the future to maintain hierarchy and subvert democracy.
— Astra Taylor (@astra.bsky.social) July 14, 2025 at 4:32 PM
McMahon and Trump's mass firing effort—part of a broader effort to shutter the department—had been blocked by a U.S. district court in Massachusetts and the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in response to a lawsuit in which Democracy Forward is representing a coalition that includes the American Federation of Teachers and Service Employees International Union.
"We are incredibly disappointed by the Supreme Court's decision to allow the Trump-Vance administration to proceed with its harmful efforts to dismantle the Department of Education while our case moves forward," the coalition said in a Monday statement. "This unlawful plan will immediately and irreparably harm students, educators, and communities across our nation."
" Children will be among those hurt the most by this decision," the coalition stressed. "We will never stop fighting on behalf of all students and public schools and the protections, services, and resources they need to thrive."
The Associated Press reported that "separately on Monday, more than 20 states sued the administration over billions of dollars in frozen education funding for after-school care, summer programs, and more."
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With Its Birthright Non-Decision, the Supreme Court Chickened Out and Left a Mess Behind
Barrett and the conservative majority produced a complicated and confusing procedural ruling that leaves the executive order in legal limbo.
Jul 10, 2025
Just how bad is the Supreme Court’s June 27 decision on birthright citizenship? Among progressive and liberal commentators, the thinking is surprisingly mixed. Some assert that Trump v. CASA “couldn’t be more disastrous” and will leave the Trump administration with “blood on its hands”; others see “silver linings” in the ruling.
The reason for the diverse reactions is simple: The 6-3 majority decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett didn’t address the underlying issue in the case—the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment for the children of undocumented immigrants. Instead, Barrett and the conservative majority produced a complicated and confusing procedural ruling that leaves the executive order in legal limbo, intact for now but subject to further litigation.
As I have written before, Trump’s birthright order defies the plain text of the very first sentence of the 14th Amendment. Known as the “Citizenship Clause,” the sentence reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Had Barrett and her confederates not ducked the underlying issue of the executive order’s constitutionality, they would have been forced either to rewrite the Citizenship Clause to uphold the order—a step even they apparently are not yet prepared to take—or invalidate a centerpiece of the MAGA mass deportation agenda.
The executive order stunningly disregards these easily understood words, proclaiming that the amendment “has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States,” but was adopted only to repudiate the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision that denied citizenship to Black Americans.
But while repudiating Dred Scott was the immediate impetus for crafting the Citizenship Clause, the Senate and the House debates in 1866 extended far beyond that notorious decision.
The clause was introduced in the Senate by Jacob Howard of Michigan on May 30, 1866, as an add-on to the draft of the 14th Amendment formulated by the House. The clause tracked similar language contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and followed the general principles of English common law and the ancient doctrine of jus solis (the “law of the soil’’)—the principle that all those born within the geographic boundaries of a nation are citizens at birth. (More than 30 countries today recognize the doctrine, including the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Great Britain modified its nationality law in 1981.)
In his introductory remarks, Howard noted the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States meant that the citizenship clause would not apply to the children of ambassadors or foreign ministers, the children of occupying foreign soldiers, or to the offspring of Native Americans who claimed allegiance to tribal governments, but that the clause would “include every other class of person,” regardless of race or descent. (Native Americans were accorded citizenship by legislation passed in 1924.)
The citizenship clause, Howard said, “settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States.”
Trump’s executive order also contradicts the court’s precedent opinions dating back to the landmark 1898 case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, which recognized the citizenship of a man born in the U.S. to parents who at the time were subjects of the Chinese Emperor but domiciled in California. That case and other later decisions demonstrate the inclusive nature of the Citizenship Clause.
Had Barrett and her confederates not ducked the underlying issue of the executive order’s constitutionality, they would have been forced either to rewrite the Citizenship Clause to uphold the order—a step even they apparently are not yet prepared to take—or invalidate a centerpiece of the MAGA mass deportation agenda.
In the end, they chose to do neither.
But they still managed to hand Trump the next best thing to a total victory. Barrett’s ruling granted the administration’s request for a “partial stay” (or pause) on three nationwide preliminary injunctions that had been issued by three federal district court judges—which blocked the birthright order from taking effect anywhere in the country—and sent the cases back to the district judges for further consideration to weed through and apply the jurisprudential mess that Barrett left behind.
In a tortured analysis that New York Magazine’s Chas Danner called “an originalist fever dream,” Barrett limited the court’s review to the sole question of whether, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, federal courts have the authority to issue nationwide, or “universal,” injunctions. The act was one of the first laws passed by Congress after the ratification of the Constitution, and in modified form remains on the books in Title 28 of the United States Code. And as Barrett noted, it is the Judiciary Act that has endowed federal courts with jurisdiction over “all suits… in equity,” and that “still today… authorizes the federal courts to issue equitable remedies,” such as injunctions.
As an originalist, Barrett interprets the Constitution and federal statutes rigidly according to their text and their “original public meaning,” discounting evolving legal norms and practices as well as contemporary social values and needs. When it comes to universal injunctions, however, originalists have a problem. No federal statute, including the Judiciary Act, explicitly authorizes judges to issue nationwide injunctions, but no statute prohibits them from doing so.
In the absence of any guidance from the 1789 act, Barrett and the majority revved up their originalist wayback machine to examine how the English High Court of Chancery operated at the time of the founding, asking if that court issued forms of equitable relief analogous to contemporary universal injunctions. “The answer,” she wrote, “is no.” Equitable remedies at the time of the founding, she concluded, could provide “complete relief between the parties” to a lawsuit, but “complete relief is not synonymous with universal relief” that applies throughout an entire country.
But then, in another confusing twist, Barrett offered the aforementioned silver linings, writing that legal challenges to Trump’s birthright order might proceed under the Administrative Procedures Act, or as class actions, or in lawsuits brought by individual states seeking relief on behalf of their own residents, which 22 states to date have joined. Barrett left it to the district courts to determine which of these alternative legal avenues might suffice, and she gave them 30 days to do so before the executive order takes effect.
In a blistering dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor charged that Barrett’s opinion “kneecaps the Judiciary’s authority to stop the Executive from enforcing even the most unconstitutional policies” and that “newborns subject to the Citizenship Order will face the gravest harms imaginable,” jeopardizing their “chance to participate in American society… unless their parents have sufficient resources to file individual suits.”
In another scathing dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted Barrett’s opinion “as an existential threat to the rule of law.”
Trump, by contrast, hailed the court’s decision, boasting that it will unblock other items on his political agenda that have been stymied by district court injunctions.
In the meantime, attorneys in the CASA case have amended their complaint to proceed as a class action, and New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin has expressed confidence that broad injunctions stopping Trump’s executive order can still be enforced in lawsuits filed by state governments.
Whether the new legal maneuvers succeed remains to be seen. None would be necessary if the Supreme Court had stood up to Trump and done its job in the first place.
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Supreme Court OKs Trump 'Third Country' Deportation of Men Held in Desert Shipping Container
Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in a dissent to a previous ruling on the case that the decision exposes "thousands to the risk of torture or death."
Jul 03, 2025
The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the Trump administration to send eight men deported from the United States and currently in limbo on a U.S. military base in Djibouti to South Sudan, where only one of the deportees is from, under a policy of fast-tracking deportations to third countries.
In an apparent 7-2 unsigned decision, with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting, the high court lifted an order from U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy blocking the deportation of the men—who are originally from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, South Korea, South Sudan, and Vietnam—to war-torn South Sudan, one of the world's most dangerous countries.
NEW: The U.S. Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to send people subject to deportation to countries they have no connection with that are so dangerous the Trump administration advises Americans not to travel there. The case involves eight men the Trump regime wants to send to South Sudan.
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— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) July 3, 2025 at 2:29 PM
The men, who have all been convicted of serious crimes in the United States, have been detained for six weeks at Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. They have been nearly constantly shackled and are under constant guard in a shipping container. The container reportedly is equipped with air conditioning.
Neither the United States nor South Sudan has explained what will happen to the men upon their arrival in the East African nation.
Last month, the Supreme Court temporarily lifted Murphy's preliminary injunction, which had enabled migrants to file claims of persecution before their deportation to counties where they have no ties in a highly controversial process called third-country removal.
Dissenting in that ruling, Sotomayor wrote that the ruling exposes "thousands to the risk of torture or death."
The administration then accused Murphy of defying the high court's ruling by insisting that the eight men still could not be sent to South Sudan and asked the justices for the clarification that came with Thursday's decision.
"They're now subject to imminent deportation to war torn South Sudan, a place where they have no ties and where it is possible, if not probable, that they will be arrested and detained upon arrival," Trina Realmuto, an attorney for the men, told Politico Thursday. "This ruling is condoning lawlessness."
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