{"id":285662,"date":"2026-05-27T03:51:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T03:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/285662\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T03:51:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T03:51:26","slug":"thomas-alito-dissent-from-refusal-to-let-florida-sue-california-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/285662\/","title":{"rendered":"Thomas, Alito dissent from refusal to let Florida sue California, Washington"},"content":{"rendered":"

Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas<\/a> and Samuel Alito<\/a> dissented Tuesday from their colleagues\u2019 refusal to let Florida mount a lawsuit that one of its targets described as a \u201cpolitical stunt\u201d announced on Fox News. <\/p>\n

The Republican-led state sought to sue Washington state and California for allegedly \u201cdefying federal law by providing commercial driver\u2019s licenses to illegal aliens who cannot read English,\u201d as Thomas\u2019 dissent for the duo put it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He recounted that Florida alleged the two Democratic-led states created conditions for \u201cthe disturbing phenomenon of illegal-alien truck drivers causing fatal accidents on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Thomas and Alito arguably are two of the most right-wing justices, and their framing of the case sympathized with Florida\u2019s stance, their objection was formally procedural rather than politically ideological. This case wasn\u2019t a typical appeal that a losing party takes from a lower court loss but rather an attempt to invoke the court\u2019s \u201coriginal jurisdiction\u201d<\/a> to hear lawsuits between states initiated at the high court.<\/p>\n

\u201cI respectfully dissent from the Court\u2019s denial of Florida\u2019s motion because we cannot refuse to hear suits between States,\u201d Thomas wrote Tuesday, lamenting that the majority \u201cdeclines to even hear Florida\u2019s claims, even though it has nowhere else to bring them.\u201d He and Alito have made similar objections before, such as when the high court rejected Missouri\u2019s bid to intervene<\/a> in Donald Trump\u2019s hush money prosecution in 2024.<\/p>\n

\tRecommended<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\"Illustration\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJordan Rubin<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJordan\u00a0Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney\u2019s Office in Manhattan\u00a0and is the author of \u201cBizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\tLatest Post\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\tBiden sues DOJ to stop release of audio and transcripts tied to special counsel probe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented Tuesday from their colleagues\u2019 refusal to let Florida mount…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-285662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}