This Brett Kavanaugh Opinion Was Too Dumb for the Justices Who Agreed With Him to Join

"Earlier this week, the Supreme Court handed down a one-page order that greenlit federal immigration officers' use of blatant racial profiling when conducting armed raids in the Los Angeles area. A lower court had temporarily barred ICE from detaining people based solely on factors like "they are speaking Spanish" or "they are day laborers waiting outside Home Depot in the morning." By blocking that lower court order, the members of the court's conservative supermajority have once again used the shadow docket to give their very favorite president everything for which he asks."

""We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work in a low wage job," wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She went on to describe the "indignities" of a ruling that functionally requires Latino people to carry enough documents to answer questions to the satisfaction of masked thugs who cannot stop beating the hell out of people for any reason or no reason at all. "The Constitution does not permit the creation of such a second-class citizenship status," she said."

"As is usually the case with this court's pro-Trump shadow docket jurisprudence, the majority did not explain its decision. But one justice, Brett Kavanaugh, wrote a concurring opinion only for himself, which contains-and here I apologize for the legal jargon-some of the stupidest shit I have ever encountered in the U.S. Reporter. Over the course of 10 pages, Kavanaugh fumbles his way through the sort of legal and factual analysis that a second-year law student would find a little embarrassing, laced with the affected earnestness of someone whose only conception of hardship is when his vacation home's cleaning crew gets stuck in traffic."

The Supreme Court issued a one-page order permitting federal immigration officers to use racial profiling during armed raids in Los Angeles. A lower court had temporarily barred ICE from detaining people solely because they spoke Spanish or appeared to be day laborers. The conservative majority blocked that lower-court order via the shadow docket without offering an explanation. Three liberal justices dissented, with Justice Sotomayor warning that the ruling creates a second-class status for Latino people and exposes them to indignities and violence. Justice Kavanaugh filed a solo concurrence that was sharply criticized as weak and ill-reasoned.

Read at Slate Magazine