But Sotomayor is concerned not just about this particular right: “No right,” she warns, “is safe in the new legal regime the court creates.” From this point on, courts will have to limit their relief to the parties, denying judges the ability to stop an unconstitutional policy dead in its tracks. The Trump administration will take immediate advantage of this decision: It currently faces more than two dozen nationwide injunctions, and it can now compel judges to severely cut back the scope of those orders. The president can resume implementing many elements of his agenda, including the illegal impoundment of appropriated funding, foreign-aid cuts, voter suppression, and immigration restrictions. Sotomayor decries this outcome, writing:
The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival. Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort. With the stroke of a pen, the president has made a “solemn mockery” of our Constitution. Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way.
“Such complicity,” she concludes, “should know no place in our system of law.”
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Jackson also penned a separate dissent that used even harsher rhetoric to accuse the majority of, in essence, crowning Trump a king. The court, the justice writes, has created a “zone of lawlessness within which the executive has the prerogative to take or leave the law as it wishes.” As this “lawlessness” flourishes, “executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional Republic will be no more.”
She condemns the decision as an “existential threat” to democracy and civil rights, one that “will surely hasten the downfall of our governing institutions, enabling our collective demise.” And she expressed her “deep disillusionment” with the court for giving Trump this immense gift.
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In addition to blatantly going against the 14th amendment, my understanding is that from now on federal court rulings will only apply to that plaintiff. So in order to find relief from an illegal law, everyone in the country would have to go to court. It’s INSANE. ETA: More on that here.
Sotamayor: “Suppose an executive order barred women from receiving unemployment benefits or black citizens from voting. Is the Government irreparably harmed, and entitled to emergency relief, by a district court order universally enjoining such policies? The majority, apparently, would say yes.”
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Sotamayor: “This Court endorses the radical proposition that the President is harmed, irreparably, whenever he cannot do something he wants to do, even if what he wants to do is break the law.”
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If birthright citizenship isn’t safe then nothing is. By the end of Trump’s term, only white men may be allowed to vote. Hell, if the birthright citenship amendment isn’t safe, then neither is the one abolishing slavery. The constitution is now meaningless. We are officially a post-law country. It’s the worst ruling since Dredd Scott.
ETA: This is what history books will point to as the final straw in the downfall of US democracy. It’s that bad.
