Justice Sonia Sotomayor publicly criticized colleague Brett Kavanaugh's understanding of immigration detentions during a speech at the University of Kansas. She highlighted his privileged background in relation to his opinion allowing stops based partly on apparent ethnicity. The remarks come amid a new lawsuit challenging such practices.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor took aim at Justice Brett Kavanaugh's opinion in a Supreme Court case that permitted immigration agents to consider a person's 'apparent ethnicity' during stops. Critics have dubbed these 'Kavanaugh stops.' Speaking at an event on Tuesday at the University of Kansas, Sotomayor reflected on Kavanaugh's concurrence, stating: 'I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops. This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.' She added that such detentions impact hourly workers harshly, noting: 'Those hours that they took you away, nobody’s paying that person. And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper.' Sotomayor emphasized her dissent aimed to show Kavanaugh was breaking precedent, not just as a personal grievance. A new class-action lawsuit filed this week in New York targets Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection for detaining people 'based solely on their perceived Latino ethnicity.' Plaintiffs describe traumatic incidents, such as unmarked vehicles pulling over lawful residents. The suit seeks a statewide injunction against racial profiling in immigration enforcement. Kavanaugh's earlier 6-3 majority support contrasted with a later footnote in Trump v. Illinois, where he said stops must be 'brief' and 'based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence,' not 'race or ethnicity.' Sotomayor's comments have sparked discussion on Supreme Court collegiality, with some viewing them as a breach of protocol.
