(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson once again drew criticism from one of her colleagues. This time from an unusual source: fellow leftist Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
On Wednesday, Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan broke ranks with Jackson and sided with the conservative majority to temporarily stay a lower court injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s plan to carry out mass layoffs within the federal bureaucracy.
The court ruled 8-1 that Trump was likely to prevail in his challenge to stop the lower court’s interference and thus allowed his efforts to continue. But Jackson appeared to treat the case as if it were about the legality of the layoffs themselves rather than the injunction at issue.
“In my view, this was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground,” Jackson wrote in her lone dissent.
Sotomayor rejected Jackson’s framing, writing that while she shared Jackson’s concerns, this was not the time to weigh the merits of Trump’s plan.
“The plans themselves are not before this Court, at this stage, and we thus have no occasion to consider whether they can and will be carried out consistent with the constraints of law,” Sotomayor wrote. “I join the court’s stay because it leaves the District Court free to consider those questions in the first instance.”
The rebuke came just two weeks after Jackson drew the ire of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a separate procedural case involving Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order.
The ruling did not weigh the constitutionality of Trump’s order, as it merely blocked lower courts from issuing universal injunctions that exceed their jurisdiction. Jackson dissented, making the dubious case that lower courts should retain their authority to halt Trump’s actions.
Barrett called Jackson’s position extreme, affirming it went far beyond the traditional defense of universal injunctions.
“She might be arguing that universal injunctions are appropriate—even required—whenever the defendant is part of the Executive Branch,” Barrett wrote. “If so, her position goes far beyond the mainstream defense of universal injunctions.”
