Once again, AJ Sotomayor's dissent is worth reading

Especially in light of yesterday's 6-3 universal injunction decision

On Friday, the Supreme Court said a qualified yes to the diapered felon who rapes’ request to partly pause rulings by three federal judges who blocked the Jan. 20th executive order that ends birthright citizenship.

I first read about it on my phone, and stopped in my tracks. My God. But upon another read, I realized that the Court did not rule on the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, which is the guarantee of citizenship to any one born in the U.S. That’s coming.

Immediately, several groups filed a national class action suit. You can read that here.

For a better explanation, Norm Eisen, senior fellow at Brookings, executive director of Democracy Defenders Fund and co-founder of The Contrarian (contrarian.substack.com), took to Bluesky:

And he shared this:

I leave it to you to decide how to feel about all this, but I’d also like to draw your attention (again) to Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent (starting on page 54 in my version), which she took 20 minutes to read aloud using the session. Reading aloud was, according to Politico, “a sign of the gravity of her concern and the importance of the case.”

In her dissent, she starts with the awful Dred Scott decision, then calls out the administration for trying to do an end run around the Constitution (by not calling for a complete stay, which would have required that they show the original executive order is constitutional, which it in no way is). She calls this “gamesmanship,” and then writes, “shamefully, this Court plays along.”

She’s just getting warmed up here, and my heart goes out to her and to the other two progressive justices who joined her in the dissent. Honestly, read the document for yourself. It’s beautifully written and shows the frustration under which the progressive wing of the court is operating — as are we all.

Stay strong, everyone.