{"id":586926,"date":"2026-04-16T02:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T02:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/586926\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T02:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T02:44:10","slug":"sonia-sotomayor-apologizes-to-brett-kavanaugh-in-us-supreme-court-justice-spat-us-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/586926\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonia Sotomayor apologizes to Brett Kavanaugh in US supreme court justice spat | US supreme court"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sonia Sotomayor, a US supreme court<\/a> justice, issued an apology on Wednesday for her recent criticism of fellow justice Brett Kavanaugh, an unusual public mea culpa that underscores the continuing divisions within the nation\u2019s top judicial body over its direction and actions in high-profile cases.<\/p>\n

Sotomayor had criticized Kavanaugh at an event in Kansas last week for an opinion he wrote in September concurring with the court\u2019s decision backing roving immigration raids in California. Kavanaugh is one of the court\u2019s six conservative justices, while Sotomayor is the senior member of the court\u2019s three-justice liberal bloc.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a recent appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law, I referred to a disagreement with one of my colleagues in a prior case, but I made remarks that were inappropriate. I regret my hurtful comments,\u201d Sotomayor said in a statement released by the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have apologized to my colleague,\u201d Sotomayor added. In the case at issue, the court granted an emergency request by the Trump administration to let immigration agents proceed with raids targeting people for deportation based on their race or language. A lower court judge had barred agents from stopping or detaining people without \u201creasonable suspicion\u201d they are in the United States illegally.<\/p>\n

Kavanaugh in a concurring opinion wrote that \u201capparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion\u201d but it can be a \u201c\u2018relevant factor\u2019 when considered along with other salient factors\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a US citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go,\u201d Kavanaugh wrote.<\/p>\n

No other justice joined his concurring opinion.<\/p>\n

Without mentioning Kavanaugh by name at the Kansas appearance, Sotomayor referenced his opinion and suggested he did not understand its real-world effects.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops,\u201d Sotomayor said, according to a Bloomberg Law report. \u201cThis is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn\u2019t really know any person who works by the hour.\u201c<\/p>\n

The comments appeared to reflect her sharply worded dissent in the September case, which was joined by the other liberal justices.<\/p>\n

The administration \u201chas all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents\u2019 satisfaction\u201d, Sotomayor wrote.<\/p>\n

In recent years, Sotomayor has made public appearances emphasizing civility and camaraderie between the justices. In January 2022, during a surge in Covid-19 infections, Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch, a conservative justice, issued a statement denying a media report of a rift between them over the wearing of masks. Returning to work after the New Year, all the justices had worn masks in the courtroom except Gorsuch.<\/p>\n

Internal divisions have periodically spilled into public view about the court\u2019s rightward shift, its ethical standards and its actions repeatedly deciding emergency requests in favor of Trump since he returned to the presidency in January 2025.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Ketanji Brown Jackson, a liberal justice, in a speech at Yale Law School in Connecticut, said the emergency decisions were having a corrosive effect on the judicial system. In 2022, Elena Kagan, a liberal justice, told an audience that the court\u2019s legitimacy could be imperiled if Americans come to view its members as trying to impose personal preferences on society, in the wake of rulings powered by her conservative colleagues curtailing abortion access and widening gun rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sonia Sotomayor, a US supreme court justice, issued an apology on Wednesday for her recent criticism of fellow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-586926","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}