ReportWire

Tag: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

  • Supreme Court allows Trump to continue ‘roving’ ICE patrols in California

    [ad_1]

    (CNN) — The Supreme Court on Monday backed President Donald Trump’s push to allow immigration enforcement officials to continue what critics describe as “roving patrols” in Southern California that lower courts said likely violated the Fourth Amendment.

    The court did not offer an explanation for its decision, which came over a sharp dissent from the three liberal justices.

    At issue were a series of incidents in which masked and heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulled aside people who identify as Latino – including some US citizens – around Los Angeles to interrogate them about their immigration status. Lower courts found that ICE likely had not established the “reasonable suspicion” required to justify those stops.

    The decision deals with seven counties in Southern California, but it has landed during a broader crackdown on immigration by the Trump administration – and officials are likely to read it as a tacit approval of similar practices elsewhere.

    “This is a win for the safety of Californians and the rule of law,” said Tricia McLaughlin, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson. “DHS law enforcement will not be slowed down and will continue to arrest and remove the murderers, rapists, gang members, and other criminal illegal aliens.”

    A US District Court in July ordered the Department of Homeland Security to discontinue the practice if the stops were based largely on a person’s apparent ethnicity, language or their presence at a particular location, such as a farm or bus stop. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld that decision, which applied only to seven California counties.

    But the Supreme Court disagreed with that approach. Though the court did not provide any analysis explaining its decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a member of the conservative wing who sided with Trump, wrote in a concurrence that the factors the agents were considering “taken together can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the United States.”

    “To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors,” Kavanaugh wrote.

    “Importantly,” Kavanaugh added, “reasonable suspicion means only that immigration officers may briefly stop the individual and inquire about immigration status.”

    ‘Freedoms are lost,’ Sotomayor warns

    The order drew a fiery dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice to serve on the Supreme Court.

    “We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” Sotomayor wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

    Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that the “on-the-ground reality” of immigration arrests cuts against the federal government’s fears that a court ruling could chill authorities’ ability to detain and deport undocumented migrants.

    “The evidence in this case, however, reveals that the government is likely to continue relying solely on those four factors because that is what agents are currently authorized and instructed to do,” Sotomayor wrote.

    Since a district court issued a ruling temporarily barring interrogations and arrests based only on a person’s apparent ethnicity, language or their presence at a particular location, members of the Trump administration have made clear they intend to proceed with their agenda as planned, the justice said.

    Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “has called the District Judge an ‘idiot’ and vowed that ‘none of [the government’s] operations are going to change,’” Sotomayor wrote. “The CBP Chief Patrol Agent in the Central District has stated that his division will ‘turn and burn’ and ‘go even harder now,’ and has posted videos on social media touting his agents’ continued efforts ‘[c]hasing, cuffing, [and] deporting’ people at car washes.”

    Referring to Kavanaugh’s concurrence, Sotomayor said that ICE agents aren’t just conducting brief or routine traffic stops. They are seizing both undocumented immigrants and US citizens “using firearms, physical violence, and warehouse detentions.”

    The case was the latest of nearly two dozen emergency appeals the administration has filed at the Supreme Court since Trump began his second term in January. Many of those have dealt with Trump’s immigration policies.

    US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, in her earlier ruling siding against Trump in the case, said the administration was attempting to convince the court “in the face of a mountain of evidence” that none of the plaintiffs’ claims were true.

    Frimpong, appointed by President Joe Biden, said in her ruling that the court needed to decide whether the plaintiffs could prove the Trump administration “is indeed conducting roving patrols without reasonable suspicion and denying access to lawyers.”

    The American Civil Liberties Union also condemned the ruling.

    “Today’s Supreme Court order puts people at grave risk, allowing federal agents in Southern California to target individuals because of their race, how they speak, the jobs they work, or just being at a bus stop or the car wash when ICE agents decide to raid a place,” said Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the ACLU, which was part of the legal team challenging the stops.

    “For anyone perceived as Latino by an ICE agent,” she added, “this means living in a fearful ‘papers please’ regime, with risks of violent ICE arrests and detention.”

    Kavanaugh wades into immigration

    Kavanaugh used his 10-page concurrence to launch into a broader discussion about the debate around illegal immigration.

    “To be sure, I recognize and fully appreciate that many (not all, but many) illegal immigrants come to the United States to escape poverty and the lack of freedom and opportunities in their home countries,” he wrote.

    “But the fact remains that, under the laws passed by Congress and the president, they are acting illegally by remaining in the United States – at least unless Congress and the president choose some other legislative approach to legalize some or all of those individuals now illegally present in the country,” he added.

    Sotomayor leaned into a growing criticism around how the Supreme Court has handled high-profile emergency cases dealing with Trump: That it has offered no explanation. The court itself offered only a single paragraph of boilerplate language in siding with Trump.

    The sometimes-terse orders have been a topic of discussion for several justices who have appeared at events over the summer. Kagan said earlier this year that she thought the court could often provide further explanation in its emergency decisions. But Kavanaugh and others have noted that the court is sometimes hesitant to signal which way it’s leaning in a case.

    “The court’s order is troubling for another reason: It is entirely unexplained,” Sotomayor wrote. “In the last eight months, this court’s appetite to circumvent the ordinary appellate process and weigh in on important issues has grown exponentially.”

    CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

    [ad_2]

    John Fritze, Hannah Rabinowitz and CNN

    Source link

  • Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson signals support for Supreme Court code of ethics in CBS interview

    Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson signals support for Supreme Court code of ethics in CBS interview

    [ad_1]

    (CNN) — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson indicated in an interview Sunday that she supports a binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court, adding that such requirements are “pretty standard” for the federal judiciary.

    “From my perspective, I don’t have any problem with an enforceable code,” Jackson, the newest member of the high court, told “CBS News Sunday Morning” in an interview about her new memoir.

    “A binding code of ethics is pretty standard for judges. And so I guess the question is, ‘Is the Supreme Court any different?’” Jackson said. “And I guess I have not seen a persuasive reason as to why the court is different than the other courts.”

    Asked whether she was considering supporting the idea, Jackson said she was “as a general matter.”

    Jackson is the latest justice to indicate an openness to an enforceable code of ethics at a time when the Supreme Court is facing heavy scrutiny — and near record low approval ratings — because of private jet flights and luxury travel accepted by some members of the court. President Joe Biden called for an enforceable code of conduct in late July.

    Jackson, Biden’s first and only nominee to the Supreme Court, declined to endorse any particular ethics policy.  She also declined to discuss Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been at the center of the court’s ethics controversies. Thomas initially failed to disclose trips and other gifts from GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, though the conservative justice has said he was following the court’s disclosure rules as he understood them at the time.

    The high court adopted its own code of conduct last year. But the measure, while historic, was heavily criticized by ethics experts because it included no way to enforce its requirements. Justice Elena Kagan, a member of the court’s liberal wing, defended the code of conduct this summer but also conceded it would be more effective if it included an enforcement mechanism.

    Jackson’s interview comes as she is promoting a new memoir, “Lovely One,” to be published Tuesday. She will also be speaking at events in New York, Washington and Atlanta this week.

    Critics of a binding code of ethics have pointed to concerns about how to enforce rules against members of a tribunal who are supposed to be the final word on the law. Some proposals, including one advanced by Senate Democrats, would create a panel of lower court judges to review ethics matters.

    “It really boils down to impartiality,” Jackson told CBS. “That’s what the rules are about. People are entitled to know if you’re accepting gifts as a judge, so that they can evaluate whether or not your opinions are impartial.”

    [ad_2]

    CNN

    Source link

  • Justice Jackson’s Crucial Argument About Affirmative Action

    Justice Jackson’s Crucial Argument About Affirmative Action

    [ad_1]

    Yesterday, an hour and a half into the marathon hearings about whether colleges can use race as a factor in admissions decisions, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson began to rub her temples as she looked down at her notes.

    “We’re entertaining a rule where some people can say what they want about who they are and have that valued in a system,” she said. “And I’m worried that that creates an inequity in the system with respect to being able to express our identity.” Black and Latino applicants would be limited if they can’t express their race in the selection process, she said. She almost laughed with exasperation. “Is that a crazy worry or is that something I should be thinking about and concerned about?”

    In previous arguments this term, Jackson was a forceful voice on issues of racial discrimination and the intent of the constitutional amendments designed to protect against it. For many in favor of race-conscious admissions, she has been a welcome presence on the Court, asking, in a way, the question at the center of the cases: Have less than 50 years of affirmative action put enough of a dent in the inequality fostered over more than two centuries of racial discrimination in higher education to merit eliminating the practice?

    From the September 2021 issue: This is the end of affirmative action

    For roughly five hours, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in cases of Students for Fair Admissions, a coalition of unnamed Asian American students brought together by the conservative legal strategist Edward Blum, against the University of North Carolina and Harvard. If the cases are successful and the justices side with SFFA—which a majority of the justices seemed quite open to in their questioning yesterday—the decision would overturn the precedent established in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978, which has been upheld for more than 40 years. Because of her previous tenure on Harvard’s Board of Overseers, Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case and sat for only the UNC case. But she did not waste the time she had.

    Although relatively few colleges are selective enough to have reason to consider race in admitting students, there is significant evidence about what happens at those schools when such programs go away. Michigan and California, for example, saw precipitous declines in Black enrollment at their flagship campuses after those states banned the practice. (By SFFA’s own estimates, described during oral argument, Black enrollment at Harvard would fall from 14 to 10 percent without affirmative action.) In some ways, that’s the backdrop to Jackson’s questions. She was driving toward a fundamental statement about what the programs are for: Race-conscious admissions are designed to help students get into college, not to exclude students as a result of their existence.

    Jackson’s point is well worn. In 1978, during the oral arguments in the Bakke case, Justice Thurgood Marshall identified it. In an exchange where he prodded Reynold Colvin, who argued for the plaintiff, Allan Bakke, Marshall pointed out, “You’re arguing about keeping somebody out and the other side is arguing about getting somebody in.” Colvin agreed. “So, it depends on which way you look at it, doesn’t it?”

    Once again, Colvin agreed. “It depends on which way you look at the problem,” Colvin said.

    Marshall’s voice changed. “It does?” he said, with a rise in inflection.

    “The problem—” Colvin began to say before Marshall cut him off.

    “It does?” Marshall said, frustrating Colvin. “You’re talking about your client’s rights; don’t these underprivileged people have rights too?”

    Yesterday, Jackson was less direct, but no less potent, in an exchange with Patrick Strawbridge, the lawyer for SFFA. She offered a hypothetical to emphasize her point. There are two applicants who would like their family backgrounds recognized. One writes that their family has been in North Carolina since before the Civil War, and that if they were admitted to the university, they would be a fifth-generation student there. The other student is also a North Carolinian whose family has been in the state since before the Civil War—but their ancestors were enslaved and, because of years of systemic discrimination, were not allowed to attend the university. But now that they have the opportunity, they would like to attend. “As I understand your no-race-conscious-admissions rule, these two applicants would have a dramatically different opportunity to tell their family stories and to have them count.” Both applicants were qualified, Jackson offered, but the first applicant’s qualifications could be recognized in the process, whereas “the second one wouldn’t be able to [get credit for those qualifications] because his story is in many ways bound up with his race and the race of his ancestors.”

    Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone: The end of affirmative action would be a disaster

    Strawbridge thought for a moment, then offered that UNC does not have to give a legacy benefit to the first applicant if it doesn’t want to. This is true, but it was not Jackson’s point: “No, but you said it was okay if they gave a legacy benefit.” Race, she said, would be the only thing that couldn’t be considered under that program. And that would disadvantage the Black student who, in a similar set of circumstances, wants “the fact that he has been in North Carolina for generations through his family” considered.

    In a day filled with questions about the meaning of “true diversity” or the educational benefits of diversity, Jackson’s questions cut through the muck. Some students had historically been denied access to some of the nation’s most well-resourced institutions of higher education—feeder campuses for prominent roles throughout society–because of their race. If SFFA wins, that fact will be one of the only things a university cannot consider in its admissions process, as though that history never happened—as though the system is fair enough already.

    [ad_2]

    Adam Harris

    Source link