Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued an unusual apology on Wednesday after she acknowledged making critical remarks about the upbringing of her conservative colleague, Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Sotomayor released a statement through the Supreme Court in which she said she made inappropriate comments at the University of Kansas School of Law and expressed regret for her remarks. Sotomayor criticized an opinion Kavanaugh wrote last year involving a decision that allowed the Trump administration to conduct broad immigration enforcement operations in the Los Angeles area.
“At a recent appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law, I referred to a disagreement with one of my colleagues in a prior case, but I made remarks that were inappropriate,” Sotomayor said in a statement issued by the court. “I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague.”
Without mentioning names, Sotomayor criticized a fellow Supreme Court justice on Tuesday. She referred to a separate opinion in the case and said the reasoning reflected a disconnect from hourly workers.
“I had a colleague in that case who wrote, ‘You know, these are only temporary stops,’” Sotomayor said, referencing a concurrence written by Kavanaugh. “This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”
Sotomayor was referring to a Supreme Court emergency decision in September that allowed the Trump administration to resume immigration enforcement sweeps in the Los Angeles area after lower court limits were lifted. In that ruling, Kavanaugh joined the court’s conservative majority in the case, while Sotomayor dissented. The Supreme Court currently holds a 6–3 conservative majority.
The decision follows the Trump administration’s August request asking the Supreme Court to block a lower court order that limited immigration officers from considering factors like race, location, type of work, or speaking Spanish when making stops. The administration said the judiciary should not “micromanage” immigration enforcement, particularly in areas where it claimed a large share of the population consists of undocumented immigrants.
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