Alito’s testy reaction to Sotomayor underscores tensions at Supreme Court

Alito s testy reaction to Sotomayor – When major rulings are announced, most Supreme Court justices practice a kind of studied impassivity. No matter how much they oppose a colleague’s decision as it’s delivered from the elevated bench, they sit stone-faced. Alternatively, no matter how much justices in the majority resent the rare oral dissenting statement, they avoid betraying emotion in the courtroom.

But then there’s Samuel Alito. Alito, who has a history of reacting with visible annoyance or incredulity – his pronounced eye-rolling as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read an opinion made headlines in 2013 – let his anger flash Thursday at Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Alito suggested to spectators that she had blindsided him with her oral dissent to his opinion favoring the Trump administration in a dispute over refugee policy at the southern border.

“There’s much that I would have added to my bench statement had I known there would be a dissent read,” Alito said, barely holding back his ire, after Sotomayor had finished her lengthy statement. Takeaways: Supreme Court hands Trump massive wins on immigration agenda While Thursday’s episode broke the staid decorum at the nation’s highest court, in some ways it was vintage Alito. His conservatism has been prevailing in case after case, yet he exudes a sense of aggrievement.

(The Supreme Court subsequently issued a statement on Friday afternoon, a day after the incident, saying: “Justice Alito was notified in advance by Justice Sotomayor’s chambers that she would be reading a dissent from the bench. It was a misunderstanding on Justice Alito’s part.” Throughout Thursday, officials had declined to comment on the episode.) For much of this year, his 20th on the bench, some observers wondered if Alito’s testy attitude signaled sufficient misery that he might be nearing retirement. But people close to Alito passed word to Fox News earlier this year that he would be staying for at least another session.

(In March, Alito fell ill while attending a dinner in Philadelphia and was taken the hospital. Court officials kept the episode quiet for nearly two weeks, until questioned by CNN.) The Supreme Court is in the final days of its annual term that starts in October. Thursday’s drama began shortly after 10 a.m.

ET as the justices began announcing four of a dozen remaining cases. First, Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered an opinion favoring Monsanto Company over a Missouri man who brought a failure-to-warn case claiming he had developed cancer from use of the Roundup herbicide. Kavanaugh said federal law preempted the lawsuit because states cannot require information on a pesticide label that goes beyond federal regulation; the Environmental Protection Agency has never required such cancer warnings on the herbicide.

Chief Justice John Roberts then announced that Alito had the court’s opinion for three cases. Alito took only a few minutes to explain a Second Amendment decision, which struck down a Hawaii law restricting handguns on private property open to the public, and then a few more minutes to detail the decision involving refugee policy at the US southern border. That latter one turned on a phrase in immigration law, testing when someone “arrives in the United States” and is eligible to seek asylum.

Alito said that only when a refugee steps foot in the US may he or she begin the asylum process. His 6-3 opinion reversed the view of lower court judges that would have allowed refugees near a border and in the process of arriving to begin the asylum screening. He said that six justices had signed the opinion, all the Republican-appointed conservatives, it turned out.

He added that three justices had dissented, Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Those are the three Democratic appointed liberals who have been on the downside of a series of rulings this term. In the white marble courtroom, the pace so far was brisk.

Three opinions had been delivered in about nine minutes. But then Sotomayor began reading her dissent. The drama was immediate as she first addressed the desperation of refugees and recalled that a ship, the M.S.

St. Louis, carrying some 900 Jews fleeing Nazi Germany and the Holocaust was turned away from the United States in 1939. The ship was also turned away from Cuba and Canada.

After the ship returned to Europe, many of the Jewish refugees became trapped under German control, and, as Sotomayor related aloud on Thursday, more than 250 of them were killed in the Holocaust. She said that US asylum protections since World War II, arising from international treaties and revisions to refugee law, ensure that anyone at a land border or port of entry could apply for asylum, even if not yet on US soil. She said that under the disputed “metering” practice, federal agents had physically blocked people from crossing in from Mexico.

She declared the majority’s interpretation of the relevant statute was “egregiously wrong.” Sotomayor, who happened to turn 72 on Thursday, went on for just over 10 minutes, closing with a reference to the light of the Statue of Liberty. During much of her reading, Alito, 76, looked straight out at courtroom spectators. At times he shut his eyes, his hands clasped in front of him.

Haiti’s World Cup run ends with a Supreme Court ruling striking a blow to many fans The courtroom is closed to cameras, so Alito’s expressions through the years have not been caught on tape. (There was a moment, however, in 2010, that was captured on national television. At a State of the Union address, then-President Barack Obama’s characterization of the Citizens United v.

Federal Election Commission ruling, which opened the door to more money from corporations in elections, prompted Alito to mouth “not true.” Spotted by TV cameras, the response went viral.) None of the current justices make their bench statements public, and all spectators are barred from bringing in any electronic devices. The dramatic tableau of decision days is often witnessed first-hand only by a few journalists, some government lawyers, and visitors fortunate enough to obtain seats in the public section. It was only when Alito began speaking again, as he was to announce his next case, also an immigration controversy, that it became clear that Sotomayor had caught him off guard.

He said he hadn’t known that she would be offering that dissenting bench statement and suggested he would have taken further steps to defend the majority’s position. In the spontaneous remarks that followed, Alito noted that two different administrations had backed the policy of keeping people from crossing the border at overwhelmed ports of entry. (The Obama administration began the practice in 2016, and then the first Trump administration formalized it.

The Biden administration rescinded the policy.) Usually, only the justice with the majority opinion reads excerpts. In rare instances, often at the end of June, when the toughest cases are resolved, a dissenting justice is compelled to speak from the bench and draw extra attention to an opposing view. Justices who plan to make an oral dissent typically let their colleagues know ahead of time.

The court did not respond Thursday to CNN’s queries on whether Sotomayor had never told Alito what was coming, or whether she did it at the last minute, as they were preparing to ascend the bench. A court spokeswoman responded on Friday afternoon with word of Alito’s “misunderstanding.” To those in the room, it appeared Alito paused enough between the two immigration cases to suggest that, at least, in the moment, he knew she wanted to speak. Sotomayor’s fervor would have been evident during the drafting process.

Alito’s opinion was 18 pages. Sotomayor’s was nearly twice that at 35 pages. In Alito’s writing, he included a line in a footnote that he might have wanted to relate to rapt spectators, to counter Sotomayor’s central claim.

“The centerpiece of the principal dissent is an impassioned argument against the administrations’ policy choice,” he wrote, “but we have neither the ability nor the authority to assess and countermand that choice.” Alito never said that aloud. Rather, after a few words of rebuke to Sotomayor, he said, “I will move on to the next case.” This story has been updated with the court’s statement on Justice Alito.