Sotomayor accuses Supreme Court of ‘rewarding lawlessness’ by Trump administration in fiery dissent

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court’s senior liberal, slammed the Trump administration’s handling of immigration matters in a fiery dissent Monday and accused her colleagues of “rewarding lawlessness” by backing its latest emergency appeal.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court’s senior liberal, slammed the Trump administration’s handling of immigration matters in a fiery dissent Monday and accused her colleagues of “rewarding lawlessness” by backing its latest emergency appeal. Sotomayor’s scathing, 19-page dissent came in a case in which the court’s majority backed the administration’s move to deport certain migrants to countries other than their homeland, including places like South Sudan, with minimal notice. But her opinion, joined by the court’s other two liberals, took much broader aim at the administration’s overall approach to federal courts. Writing that President Donald Trump’s administration had “openly flouted two court orders,” Sotomayor warned about the long-term consequences of siding with the Department of Homeland Security in the cases. “Even if the orders in question had been mistaken, the government had a duty to obey them until they were ‘reversed by orderly and proper proceedings,’” Sotomayor wrote. “That principle is a bedrock of the rule of law. The government’s misconduct threatens it to its core.” The high court, Sotomayor wrote, is abetting the administration’s behavior. “This is not the first time the court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last,” Sotomayor wrote. “Yet each time this court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.”