Sotomayor, Jackson argue Casa ruling threatens rule of law

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissents argue that no Constitutional rights are safe under the precedent established by Barrett’s ruling.

“No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates. Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief. That holding renders constitutional guarantees meaningful in name only for any individuals who are not parties to a lawsuit,” Sotomayor wrote.

Jackson wrote that Barrett’s ruling changes America from being a land of laws.

“Perhaps the degradation of our rule-of-law regime would happen anyway. But this Court’s complicity in the creation of a culture of disdain for lower courts, their rulings, and the law (as they interpret it) will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise,” Jackson wrote.

Birthright citizenship is so well-established that the federal government purposefully sidestepped the unconstitutionality of its executive order,” Sotomayor wrote.

“Children born in the United States and subject to its laws are United States citizens. That has been the legal rule since the founding, and it was the English rule well before then,” Sotomayor began her dissent.

“So the Government instead tries its hand at a different game. It asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone. Instead, the Government says, it should be able to apply the Citizenship Order (whose legality it does not defend) to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit,” she wrote.

Trump’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment goes against the legislative intent of the 14th Amendment, Sotomayor wrote.

“The lawmakers who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment understood that it would extend citizenship to all children born here, regardless of parental citizenship. Indeed, some objected to its passage on those grounds, complaining that it would permanently extend citizenship to immigrants who ‘invade [state] borders’ and ‘settle as trespassers.’...Proponents agreed, if not with the anti-immigrant sentiment, that the Clause would extend citizenship to the children of immigrants. For example, Senator Conness of California (one of the Amendment’s lead supporters) confirmed on the floor ‘that the children born here of Mongolian parents shall be declared by the Constitution of the United States to be entitled to civil rights and to equal protection before the law,’” Sotomayor wrote.

Jackson wrote that Barrett’s ruling opens the door for imprisonment of political enemies.

“Imagine an Executive who issues a blanket order that is blatantly unconstitutional—demanding, say, that any and all of its political foes be summarily and indefinitely incarcerated in a prison outside the jurisdiction of the United States, without any hearing or chance to be heard in court. Shortly after learning of this edict, one such political rival rushes into court with his lawyer, claims the Executive’s order violates the Constitution, and secures an injunction that prohibits the Executive from enforcing that unconstitutional mandate. The upshot of today’s decision is that, despite that rival’s success in persuading a judge of the unconstitutional nature of the Executive’s proclamation, the court’s ruling and injunction can only require the Executive to shelve any no-process incarceration plan that targets that particular individual (the named plaintiff ); the Executive can keep right on rounding up its other foes, despite the court’s clear and unequivocal pronouncement that the executive order is unlawful,” Jackson wrote.