Latest news with #Sotomayor
AsiaOne
8 hours ago
- Politics
- AsiaOne
Supreme Court in birthright case limits judges' power to block presidential policies, World News
WASHINGTON - The US Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory on Friday (June 27) in a case involving birthright citizenship by curbing the ability of judges to impede his policies nationwide, changing the power balance between the federal judiciary and presidents. The 6-3 ruling, authored by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, did not let Trump's directive restricting birthright citizenship go into effect immediately, directing lower courts that blocked it to reconsider the scope of their orders. The ruling also did not address the legality of the policy, part of Trump's hardline approach toward immigration. The Republican president lauded the ruling and said his administration can now try to move forward with numerous policies such as his birthright citizenship executive order that he said "have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis." "We have so many of them. I have a whole list," Trump told reporters at the White House. The court granted the administration's request to narrow the scope of three so-called "universal" injunctions issued by federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state that halted enforcement of his directive nationwide while litigation challenging the policy plays out. The court's conservative justices were in the majority and its liberal members dissented. The ruling specified that Trump's executive order cannot take effect until 30 days after Friday's ruling. The ruling thus raises the prospect of Trump's order eventually applying in some parts of the country. Federal judges have taken steps including issuing numerous nationwide orders impeding Trump's aggressive use of executive action to advance his agenda. The three judges in the birthright citizenship litigation found that Trump's order likely violates citizenship language in the US Constitution's 14th Amendment. On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a "green card" holder. Warning against an "imperial judiciary," Barrett wrote, "No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation - in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so." Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling a "travesty for the rule of law" as she read a summary of her dissent from the bench. In her written dissent, joined by the court's two other liberal justices, Sotomayor criticised the court's majority for ignoring whether Trump's executive order is constitutional. "Yet the order's patent unlawfulness reveals the gravity of the majority's error and underscores why equity supports universal injunctions as appropriate remedies in this kind of case," Sotomayor wrote. More than 150,000 newborns would be denied citizenship annually under Trump's directive, according to the plaintiffs who challenged it, including the Democratic attorneys general of 22 states as well as immigrant rights advocates and pregnant immigrants. The ruling was issued on the final day of decisions on cases argued before the Supreme Court during its nine-month term that began in October. The court also issued rulings on Friday backing a Texas law regarding online pornography, letting parents opt children out of classes when storybooks with LGBT characters are read, endorsing the Federal Communications Commission's funding mechanism for expanded phone and broadband internet access and preserving Obamacare's provision on health insurers covering preventive care. 'Monumental victory' Trump called the ruling a "monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law." The policies Trump said his administration can now attempt to proceed with included cutting off funds to so-called "sanctuary cities," suspending resettlement of refugees in the United States, freezing "unnecessary" federal funding and preventing federal funds from paying for gender-affirming surgeries. [[nid:632424]] The case before the Supreme Court was unusual in that the administration used it to argue that federal judges lack the authority to issue "universal" injunctions, and asked the justices to rule that way and enforce the president's directive even without weighing its legal merits. Friday's ruling did not rule out all forms of broad relief. The ruling said judges may provide "complete relief" only to the plaintiffs before them. It did not foreclose the possibility that states might need an injunction that applies beyond their borders to obtain complete relief. "We decline to take up those arguments in the first instance," wrote Barrett, who Trump appointed to the court in 2020. The ruling left untouched the potential for plaintiffs to seek wider relief through class action lawsuits, but that legal mechanism is often harder to successfully mount. In her dissent, Sotomayor said Trump's executive order is obviously unconstitutional. So rather than defend it on the merits, she wrote, the Justice Department "asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone." Sotomayor advised parents of children who would be affected by Trump's order "to file promptly class action suits and to request temporary injunctive relief for the putative class." Maryland-based US District Judge Deborah Boardman, who previously blocked the order nationwide, scheduled a Monday hearing after immigration rights advocates filed a motion asking her to treat the case as a class action and block the policy nationwide again. "The Supreme Court has now instructed that, in such circumstances, class-wide relief may be appropriate," the lawyers wrote in their motion. Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown, whose state helped secure the nationwide injunction issued by a judge in Seattle, called Friday's ruling "disappointing on many levels" but stressed that the justices "confirmed that courts may issue broad injunctions when needed to provide complete relief to the parties." Universal injunctions have been opposed by presidents of both parties - Republican and Democratic - and can prevent the government from enforcing a policy against anyone, instead of just the individual plaintiffs who sued to challenge the policy. Proponents have said they are an efficient check on presidential overreach, and have stymied actions deemed unlawful by presidents of both parties. 'Illegal and cruel' The American Civil Liberties Union called the ruling troubling, but limited, because lawyers can seek additional protections for potentially affected families. "The executive order is blatantly illegal and cruel. It should never be applied to anyone," said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. "The court's decision to potentially open the door to enforcement is disappointing, but we will do everything in our power to ensure no child is ever subjected to the executive order." The plaintiffs argued that Trump's directive ran afoul of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War of 1861-1865 that ended slavery in the United States. The 14th Amendment's citizenship clause states that all "persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." The administration contends that the 14th Amendment, long understood to confer citizenship to virtually anyone born in the United States, does not extend to immigrants who are in the country illegally or even to immigrants whose presence is lawful but temporary, such as university students or those on work visas. In a June 11-12 Reuters/Ipsos poll, 24 per cent of all respondents supported ending birthright citizenship and 52 per cent opposed it. Among Democrats, 5 per cent supported ending it, with 84 per cent opposed. Among Republicans, 43 per cent supported ending it, with 24 per cent opposed. The rest said they were unsure or did not respond to the question. The Supreme Court has handed Trump some important victories on his immigration policies since he returned to office in January. On Monday, it cleared the way for his administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face. In separate decisions on May 30 and May 19, it let the administration end the temporary legal status previously given by the government to hundreds of thousands of migrants on humanitarian grounds. But the court on May 16 kept in place its block on Trump's deportations of Venezuelan migrants under a 1798 law historically used only in wartime, faulting his administration for seeking to remove them without adequate due process.
The Sun
13 hours ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Supreme Court in birthright case limits judges' power to block presidential policies
WASHINGTON: The U.S. Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory on Friday in a case involving birthright citizenship by curbing the ability of judges to impede his policies nationwide, changing the power balance between the federal judiciary and presidents. The 6-3 ruling, authored by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, did not let Trump's directive restricting birthright citizenship go into effect immediately, directing lower courts that blocked it to reconsider the scope of their orders. The ruling also did not address the legality of the policy, part of Trump's hardline approach toward immigration. The Republican president lauded the ruling and said his administration can now try to move forward with numerous policies such as his birthright citizenship executive order that he said "have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis." "We have so many of them. I have a whole list," Trump told reporters at the White House. The court granted the administration's request to narrow the scope of three so-called "universal" injunctions issued by federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state that halted enforcement of his directive nationwide while litigation challenging the policy plays out. The court's conservative justices were in the majority and its liberal members dissented. The ruling specified that Trump's executive order cannot take effect until 30 days after Friday's ruling. The ruling thus raises the prospect of Trump's order eventually applying in some parts of the country. Federal judges have taken steps including issuing numerous nationwide orders impeding Trump's aggressive use of executive action to advance his agenda. The three judges in the birthright citizenship litigation found that Trump's order likely violates citizenship language in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a "green card" holder. Warning against an "imperial judiciary," Barrett wrote, "No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation - in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so." Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling a "travesty for the rule of law" as she read a summary of her dissent from the bench. In her written dissent, joined by the court's two other liberal justices, Sotomayor criticized the court's majority for ignoring whether Trump's executive order is constitutional. "Yet the order's patent unlawfulness reveals the gravity of the majority's error and underscores why equity supports universal injunctions as appropriate remedies in this kind of case," Sotomayor wrote. More than 150,000 newborns would be denied citizenship annually under Trump's directive, according to the plaintiffs who challenged it, including the Democratic attorneys general of 22 states as well as immigrant rights advocates and pregnant immigrants. The ruling was issued on the final day of decisions on cases argued before the Supreme Court during its nine-month term that began in October. The court also issued rulings on Friday backing a Texas law regarding online pornography, letting parents opt children out of classes when storybooks with LGBT characters are read, endorsing the Federal Communications Commission's funding mechanism for expanded phone and broadband internet access and preserving Obamacare's provision on health insurers covering preventive care. MONUMENTAL VICTORY Trump called the ruling a "monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law." The policies Trump said his administration can now attempt to proceed with included cutting off funds to so-called "sanctuary cities," suspending resettlement of refugees in the United States, freezing "unnecessary" federal funding and preventing federal funds from paying for gender-affirming surgeries. The case before the Supreme Court was unusual in that the administration used it to argue that federal judges lack the authority to issue "universal" injunctions, and asked the justices to rule that way and enforce the president's directive even without weighing its legal merits. Friday's ruling did not rule out all forms of broad relief. The ruling said judges may provide "complete relief" only to the plaintiffs before them. It did not foreclose the possibility that states might need an injunction that applies beyond their borders to obtain complete relief. "We decline to take up those arguments in the first instance," wrote Barrett, who Trump appointed to the court in 2020. The ruling left untouched the potential for plaintiffs to seek wider relief through class action lawsuits, but that legal mechanism is often harder to successfully mount. In her dissent, Sotomayor said Trump's executive order is obviously unconstitutional. So rather than defend it on the merits, she wrote, the Justice Department "asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone." Sotomayor advised parents of children who would be affected by Trump's order "to file promptly class action suits and to request temporary injunctive relief for the putative class." Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, who previously blocked the order nationwide, scheduled a Monday hearing after immigration rights advocates filed a motion asking her to treat the case as a class action and block the policy nationwide again. "The Supreme Court has now instructed that, in such circumstances, class-wide relief may be appropriate," the lawyers wrote in their motion. Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown, whose state helped secure the nationwide injunction issued by a judge in Seattle, called Friday's ruling "disappointing on many levels" but stressed that the justices "confirmed that courts may issue broad injunctions when needed to provide complete relief to the parties." Universal injunctions have been opposed by presidents of both parties - Republican and Democratic - and can prevent the government from enforcing a policy against anyone, instead of just the individual plaintiffs who sued to challenge the policy. Proponents have said they are an efficient check on presidential overreach, and have stymied actions deemed unlawful by presidents of both parties. ILLEGAL AND CRUEL The American Civil Liberties Union called the ruling troubling, but limited, because lawyers can seek additional protections for potentially affected families. "The executive order is blatantly illegal and cruel. It should never be applied to anyone," said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. "The court's decision to potentially open the door to enforcement is disappointing, but we will do everything in our power to ensure no child is ever subjected to the executive order." The plaintiffs argued that Trump's directive ran afoul of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War of 1861-1865 that ended slavery in the United States. The 14th Amendment's citizenship clause states that all "persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." The administration contends that the 14th Amendment, long understood to confer citizenship to virtually anyone born in the United States, does not extend to immigrants who are in the country illegally or even to immigrants whose presence is lawful but temporary, such as university students or those on work visas. In a June 11-12 Reuters/Ipsos poll, 24% of all respondents supported ending birthright citizenship and 52% opposed it. Among Democrats, 5% supported ending it, with 84% opposed. Among Republicans, 43% supported ending it, with 24% opposed. The rest said they were unsure or did not respond to the question. The Supreme Court has handed Trump some important victories on his immigration policies since he returned to office in January. On Monday, it cleared the way for his administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face. In separate decisions on May 30 and May 19, it let the administration end the temporary legal status previously given by the government to hundreds of thousands of migrants on humanitarian grounds. But the court on May 16 kept in place its block on Trump's deportations of Venezuelan migrants under a 1798 law historically used only in wartime, faulting his administration for seeking to remove them without adequate due process.
The Sun
14 hours ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Supreme Court backs Trump on curbing universal injunctions
WASHINGTON: The U.S. Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a major victory on Friday in a case involving birthright citizenship by curbing the ability of judges to impede his policies nationwide, changing the power balance between the federal judiciary and presidents. The 6-3 ruling, authored by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, did not let Trump's directive restricting birthright citizenship go into effect immediately, directing lower courts that blocked it to reconsider the scope of their orders. The ruling also did not address the legality of the policy, part of Trump's hardline approach toward immigration. The Republican president lauded the ruling and said his administration can now try to move forward with numerous policies such as his birthright citizenship executive order that he said "have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis." "We have so many of them. I have a whole list," Trump told reporters at the White House. The court granted the administration's request to narrow the scope of three so-called "universal" injunctions issued by federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts and Washington state that halted enforcement of his directive nationwide while litigation challenging the policy plays out. The court's conservative justices were in the majority and its liberal members dissented. The ruling specified that Trump's executive order cannot take effect until 30 days after Friday's ruling. The ruling thus raises the prospect of Trump's order eventually applying in some parts of the country. Federal judges have taken steps including issuing numerous nationwide orders impeding Trump's aggressive use of executive action to advance his agenda. The three judges in the birthright citizenship litigation found that Trump's order likely violates citizenship language in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a "green card" holder. Warning against an "imperial judiciary," Barrett wrote, "No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the law. But the Judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation - in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the Judiciary from doing so." Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling a "travesty for the rule of law" as she read a summary of her dissent from the bench. In her written dissent, joined by the court's two other liberal justices, Sotomayor criticized the court's majority for ignoring whether Trump's executive order is constitutional. "Yet the order's patent unlawfulness reveals the gravity of the majority's error and underscores why equity supports universal injunctions as appropriate remedies in this kind of case," Sotomayor wrote. More than 150,000 newborns would be denied citizenship annually under Trump's directive, according to the plaintiffs who challenged it, including the Democratic attorneys general of 22 states as well as immigrant rights advocates and pregnant immigrants. The ruling was issued on the final day of decisions on cases argued before the Supreme Court during its nine-month term that began in October. The court also issued rulings on Friday backing a Texas law regarding online pornography, letting parents opt children out of classes when storybooks with LGBT characters are read, endorsing the Federal Communications Commission's funding mechanism for expanded phone and broadband internet access and preserving Obamacare's provision on health insurers covering preventive care. MONUMENTAL VICTORY Trump called the ruling a "monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law." The policies Trump said his administration can now attempt to proceed with included cutting off funds to so-called "sanctuary cities," suspending resettlement of refugees in the United States, freezing "unnecessary" federal funding and preventing federal funds from paying for gender-affirming surgeries. The case before the Supreme Court was unusual in that the administration used it to argue that federal judges lack the authority to issue "universal" injunctions, and asked the justices to rule that way and enforce the president's directive even without weighing its legal merits. Friday's ruling did not rule out all forms of broad relief. The ruling said judges may provide "complete relief" only to the plaintiffs before them. It did not foreclose the possibility that states might need an injunction that applies beyond their borders to obtain complete relief. "We decline to take up those arguments in the first instance," wrote Barrett, who Trump appointed to the court in 2020. The ruling left untouched the potential for plaintiffs to seek wider relief through class action lawsuits, but that legal mechanism is often harder to successfully mount. In her dissent, Sotomayor said Trump's executive order is obviously unconstitutional. So rather than defend it on the merits, she wrote, the Justice Department "asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone." Sotomayor advised parents of children who would be affected by Trump's order "to file promptly class action suits and to request temporary injunctive relief for the putative class." Maryland-based U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, who previously blocked the order nationwide, scheduled a Monday hearing after immigration rights advocates filed a motion asking her to treat the case as a class action and block the policy nationwide again. "The Supreme Court has now instructed that, in such circumstances, class-wide relief may be appropriate," the lawyers wrote in their motion. Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown, whose state helped secure the nationwide injunction issued by a judge in Seattle, called Friday's ruling "disappointing on many levels" but stressed that the justices "confirmed that courts may issue broad injunctions when needed to provide complete relief to the parties." Universal injunctions have been opposed by presidents of both parties - Republican and Democratic - and can prevent the government from enforcing a policy against anyone, instead of just the individual plaintiffs who sued to challenge the policy. Proponents have said they are an efficient check on presidential overreach, and have stymied actions deemed unlawful by presidents of both parties. ILLEGAL AND CRUEL The American Civil Liberties Union called the ruling troubling, but limited, because lawyers can seek additional protections for potentially affected families. "The executive order is blatantly illegal and cruel. It should never be applied to anyone," said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project. "The court's decision to potentially open the door to enforcement is disappointing, but we will do everything in our power to ensure no child is ever subjected to the executive order." The plaintiffs argued that Trump's directive ran afoul of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War of 1861-1865 that ended slavery in the United States. The 14th Amendment's citizenship clause states that all "persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." The administration contends that the 14th Amendment, long understood to confer citizenship to virtually anyone born in the United States, does not extend to immigrants who are in the country illegally or even to immigrants whose presence is lawful but temporary, such as university students or those on work visas. In a June 11-12 Reuters/Ipsos poll, 24% of all respondents supported ending birthright citizenship and 52% opposed it. Among Democrats, 5% supported ending it, with 84% opposed. Among Republicans, 43% supported ending it, with 24% opposed. The rest said they were unsure or did not respond to the question. The Supreme Court has handed Trump some important victories on his immigration policies since he returned to office in January. On Monday, it cleared the way for his administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face. In separate decisions on May 30 and May 19, it let the administration end the temporary legal status previously given by the government to hundreds of thousands of migrants on humanitarian grounds. But the court on May 16 kept in place its block on Trump's deportations of Venezuelan migrants under a 1798 law historically used only in wartime, faulting his administration for seeking to remove them without adequate due process.
New York Post
16 hours ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Justice Jackson's activist opinion does more damage to Supreme Court civility
For most citizens, the release of Supreme Court opinions is about as exciting as watching paint dry, particularly in a case dealing with the limits of district courts in issuing universal injunctions. Yet Friday's Trump v. CASA case included a virtual slugfest between Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The decision was one of the biggest of the term. The Court moved to free the Administration from an onslaught of orders from district judges seeking to block the President in areas ranging from the downsizing of government to immigration. Advertisement However, it was the departure of the normally staid court analysis that attracted the most attention. The tenor of Jackson's language shocked not just many court watchers, but her colleagues. It seemed ripped from the signs carried just a couple of weeks earlier in the 'No Kings' protests. The Court often deals with issues that deeply divide the nation. Yet it tends to calm the waters by engaging in measured, reasoned analysis — showing the nation that these are matters upon which people can have good-faith disagreements. But that culture of civility and mutual respect has been under attack in recent years. Advertisement Not long ago, the Court was rocked by the leaking of the draft of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The was followed by furious protests against conservative justices at their homes and an attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. There was also a change in the tenor of the exchanges in oral argument and opinions between the justices. Recently, during the argument over the use of national injunctions in May, Chief Justice John Roberts was clearly fed up with Justice Sotomayor interrupting government counsel with pointed questions and commentary, finally asking Sotomayor, 'Will you please let us hear his answer?' This hyperbole seemed to border on hysteria in the Jackson dissent. The most junior justice effectively accused her colleagues of being toadies for tyranny. Advertisement It proved too much for the majority, which pushed back on the overwrought rhetoric. While the language may seem understated in comparison to what we regularly hear in Congress, it was the equivalent of a virtual cage match for the Court. Some of us have argued that our system is working just as designed, particularly as these issues work through the courts. The courts have ruled for and against this Administration as they struggle with the difficult lines of authority between the branches. Liberals who claim 'democracy is dying' seem to view democracy as getting what you want when you want it. Advertisement It was, therefore, distressing to see Jackson picking up on the 'No Kings' theme, warning about drifting toward 'a rule-of-kings governing system' She said that limiting the power of individual judges to freeze the entire federal government was 'enabling our collective demise. At the very least, I lament that the majority is so caught up in minutiae of the Government's self-serving, finger-pointing arguments that it misses the plot.' The 'minutiae' dismissed by Jackson happen to be the statutory and constitutional authority of federal courts. It is the minutiae that distinguish the rule of law from mere judicial impulse. Justice Barrett clearly had had enough with the self-aggrandizing rhetoric. She delivered a haymaker in writing that 'JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: '[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.' Ibid. That goes for judges too.' She added, 'We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON's argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.' In other words, the danger to democracy is found in judges acting like kings. Barrett explained to her three liberal colleagues that 'when a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.' The last term has laid bare some of the chilling jurisprudence of Justice Jackson. Untethered by statutory or constitutional text, it allows the courts to float free from the limits of Article III. Advertisement For many, that is not an escape into minutiae but madness without clear lines for judicial power. Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the best-selling author of 'The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.'
The Hill
21 hours ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Liberal justices denounce LGBTQ books ruling in dissent: ‘Children will suffer'
The Supreme Court's three Democratic-appointed justices on Friday dissented from the majority opinion in a case involving a group of parents wishing to opt their children out of elementary school lessons with LGBTQ storybooks, writing that the decision 'ushers in that new reality' eroding kids' 'opportunity to practice living in our multicultural society.' The high court ruled 6-3 along ideological lines on Friday morning to send the case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, back to a lower court for a final decision on whether Montgomery County, Md., must provide an opt-out option for parents. Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority that, in the meantime, the school district must notify parents in advance of the books being read and allow them to remove their children from the classroom. The district's lack of such an option likely substantially burdens parents' constitutional right to freely exercise their religion, he wrote. 'Exposing students to the 'message' that LGBTQ people exist, and that their loved ones may celebrate their marriages and life events, the majority says, is enough to trigger the most demanding form of judicial scrutiny,' Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in Friday's dissent, joined by justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. 'Given the great diversity of religious beliefs in this country, countless interactions that occur every day in public schools might expose children to messages that conflict with a parent's religious beliefs. If that is sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny, then little is not.' Sotomayor read her dissent aloud from the bench, a move typically reserved for justices emphasizing their strong disagreement with a decision. It is the third time this term that Sotomayor has read a dissent from the bench. The first time, she did so in the court's ruling in U.S. v. Skrmetti, in which it upheld a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming care for minors. She did it again Friday in dissenting with the court's ruling on President Trump's birthright citizenship order. The result of the court's Mahmoud v. Taylor decision, Sotomayor said, 'will be chaos for this Nation's public schools.' 'Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent's religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools,' she wrote. 'The harm will not be borne by educators alone: Children will suffer too. Classroom disruptions and absences may well inflict long-lasting harm on students' learning and development.' 'Worse yet, the majority closes its eyes to the inevitable chilling effects of its ruling,' she wrote. 'Many school districts, and particularly the most resource strapped, cannot afford to engage in costly litigation over opt-out rights or to divert resources to tracking and managing student absences. Schools may instead censor their curricula, stripping material that risks generating religious objections. The Court's ruling, in effect, thus hands a subset of parents the right to veto curricular choices long left to locally elected school boards. Because I cannot countenance the Court's contortion of our precedent and the untold harms that will follow, I dissent.'
