“Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears” is a blog series documenting the harmful impact of President Trump’s judges on Americans’ rights and liberties. It includes judges nominated in both his first and second terms.
Trump justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett cast deciding votes in a 6-3 shadow docket ruling that reversed a lower court injunction and allowed ICE and other federal agents in and around Los Angeles to resume stopping and detaining people based on race and other factors suggesting use of racial profiling. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson strongly dissented from the September decision in Noem v Vasquez Perdomo.
What happened in this case?
In June, ICE and other federal agents began in the Los Angeles area what was characterized as the “largest Mass Deportation Operation” in US history. Victims and others went to federal court, charging that the federal officials were conducting raids and improperly detaining people without reasonable suspicion and based instead on race and other racial-profiling factors.
In July, Biden-nominated Judge Mamme Frimpong conducted an extensive hearing and entered a temporary restraining order prohibiting agents from detaining people without reasonable suspicion that they are in the US illegally and based solely on race, speaking in Spanish or accented English, being present at a specific area where undocumented immigrants are “known to gather,” or working at specified jobs like landscaping or construction. She declined a request to stay the order as the case moved forward.
The Ninth Circuit also declined to stay Judge Frimpong’s order. The Trump Administration took the case to the Supreme Court’s shadow docket, seeking a stay of the order as the case continues on appeal.
How did Trump justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett and the rest of the Court majority rule and why is the result harmful?
In yet another shadow docket ruling without explanation, the three Trump justices joined Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas and Alito in staying the district court’s temporary restraining order (TRO) and permitting the Trump Administration’s harsh enforcement tactics to continue as the case moves forward. The stay remains in effect while the appeal of the TRO is pending.
Justice Sotomayor wrote a blistering dissent, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson. She carefully reviewed the record in the case and the relevant precedent. Contradicting previous case law, she wrote, “[c]ountless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact that they make a living by doing manual labor.” The majority’s ruling, she went on, “needlessly subjects countless more”, including US citizens, to such improper treatment by government officials. In yet another “grave misuse of our emergency docket,” she concluded, the majority was unconstitutionally authorizing government agents to abruptly “seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” including numerous residents of Los Angeles.
As Justice Sotomayor pointed out, more court proceedings will likely occur in this case, such as a hearing on a motion for a preliminary injunction in the district court. In light of the holdings by the Trump justices and the rest of the majority so far, however, it is all too likely that federal agents will stop, seize and harm many innocent people in Los Angeles who simply “look…Latino” as the case moves forward and after it concludes. In addition, the ruling illustrates the importance of our federal courts to health, welfare and justice and the significance of having fair-minded judges on the federal bench.