Supreme Court Sniping Heats Up as Justices Near Opinion Season

Tensions are starting to boil over at the US Supreme Court.

Back-and-forth sniping between Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Samuel Alito Monday night marked the latest sign of strain at a court that has become a prominent symbol of the polarization besetting the country.

The two clashed over a procedural step the court took in the aftermath of last week’s decision restricting the creation of majority-Black and majority-Hispanic voting districts. Jackson accused the majority of taking sides in a political debate; Alito and two other conservatives said her claims were “insulting” and “utterly irresponsible.”

Justices Samuel Alito and Ketanji Brown Jackson

Photographer: Eric Lee/Bloomberg

The sharp words come as the court heads into its high-stakes opinion season. Over the next eight weeks, the court is due to rule in the remaining 35 of the 58 cases argued in its nine-month term. Still-to-come decisions involve President Donald Trump’s plan to restrict birthright citizenship, his bid to fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and state laws barring transgender girls from female sports teams.

“Such pointed exchanges at the beginning of May suggest that there will be major fireworks at the end of June, when the Supreme Court typically issues its most divisive, hotly contested decisions,” Yale Law School professor Justin Driver said.

Jackson was the lone public dissenter Monday night when the court sent the redistricting case back to a three-judge panel ahead of schedule. The move smoothed the road for Louisiana to draw a new map for the November midterm without a disputed majority-Black district.

Jackson accused the court of betraying its principles, including its past pronouncements that judges shouldn’t change the voting rules on the eve of an election. “Just like that, those principles give way to power,” she wrote.

She was one of three dissenters last week, when the court used the Louisiana case to sharply limit use of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the landmark law enacted in response to widespread discrimination against Black voters. The court’s other two liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, joined Jackson in the minority but didn’t publicly object to Monday’s follow-up action.

‘Utterly Irresponsible’

Jackson’s remarks Monday drew a fiery response from Alito, who said in an opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch that her dissent “levels charges that cannot go unanswered.” Alito took particular umbrage at Jackson’s claim that the court was engaging in an unprincipled power play, calling that “a groundless and utterly irresponsible charge.”

The exchange was released less than an hour before conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said she and her colleagues work behind the scenes at maintaining their relationships through lunches and occasional dinners at each other’s homes.

Justices Brett Kavanaugh, left, and Amy Coney Barrett, during a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the US Capitol in Washington

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

“I think collegiality is a decision you make,” Barrett said in an appearance at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas. “You have to make decisions to spend time with people, and particularly people with whom you might disagree, in order to forge those bonds.”

But Thomas suggested recently that the court wasn’t as collegial as it was when he took his seat in 1991.

“I joined the court that dealt with differences as friends. We respected each other,” he said in an April 15 appearance at the University of Texas. “That civility, I don’t know how you bring it back in the current environment with social media and name-calling and people accusing each other of various things and animus.”

Jackson Factor

Jackson, the court’s newest and most liberal justice, has been at the center of much of the sparring. Speaking at Yale Law School last month, she blasted her colleagues’ handling of the emergency requests that have become a major part of the court’s docket. She said those decisions, which at times come with little if any explanation, can “seem oblivious and thus ring hollow.”

At times she has seemed to irk the court’s conservatives, particularly Alito. During an immigration argument in April, she offered up a hypothetical scenario in which an administration systematically restricted green card holders when they tried to re-enter the country. Alito then labeled the suggested a “conspiracy theory.”

And Barrett tangled publicly with Jackson last year when the court limited the power of federal judges to block government policies nationwide. Writing for the court, Barrett took a dismissive tone toward Jackson’s dissenting opinion, writing at one point that “we will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument” and at another that the junior justice had chosen “a startling line of attack.”

Days later Jackson said her feelings don’t get hurt by what the other justices say in response to her opinions. “I have a very thick skin,” she said at an Indianapolis Bar Association event.

Driver said there appeared to be a “deterioration of morale at the court,” driven in large part by the relentless stream of emergency requests. “It seems to me that there is precious little in the way of bonhomie, let alone esprit de corps,” he said.

Yet another fissure occurred in April, when Sotomayor took aim at Justice Brett Kavanaugh after he wrote an opinion that minimized the impact of a decision letting warrantless immigration stops resume in Los Angeles.

“This is from a man whose parents were professionals,” Sotomayor said at an April 7 event at the University of Kansas School of Law. “And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.” She later issued a rare public apology, saying she regretted her “hurtful” comments.

The feuding is taking place amid an unprecedented barrage of personal attacks from the president. In an April 22 Truth Social Post, Trump called Jackson “that new, Low IQ person.” He also renewed complaints about three Republican-appointed justices – Gorsuch, Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts – who voted with the liberals to strike down his signature tariffs.

“It appears from the outside that there has been an erosion of comity and trust,” said Jonathan Adler, a constitutional and administrative law professor at William & Mary Law School. “This raises the concern that it could affect how the court operates and inhibit deliberation.”

To contact the reporters on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net;
Justin Wise in Arlington at jwise52@bloomberg.net;
Jordan Fischer in Arlington at jfischer184@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

Seth Stern

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