It’s Not Docket Science
It moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. That’s Ferris Bueller’s famous quote about life. But the same could be said about terrible Supreme Court shadow docket decisions (that are handed down, often unsigned, sans full briefings, oral arguments, or written opinions). The latest one is particularly disturbing, and it’s worth stopping and paying attention to what it allows. In response to a complaint that (often masked) federal agents in LA were essentially targeting brown people en masse, “Judge Maame E. Frimpong, of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California … ordered agents not to rely on several factors, alone or in combination, in deciding whom to stop and question in her judicial district, which includes Los Angeles and surrounding areas. The factors were race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or accented English; presence at a particular location, such as a day-laborer or agricultural site; or performing a particular type of work.” Makes sense, because, you know, America. Constitution. Fourth Amendment. Blah, blah. But the SCOTUS majority essentially took the Fifth when it comes to enforcing the Fourth. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority “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’ satisfaction. Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor. Today, the court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.” Will those countless more be limited to Los Angeles where this complaint was brought? “The majority’s failure to provide an explanation for the ruling means that it is hard to say whether its reasoning applies nationwide or is limited to the Los Angeles area, where the administration has said that the problems flowing from illegal immigration are especially pronounced. But there is little doubt that the ruling will have the practical effect of further emboldening the administration’s uncompromising efforts to deport unauthorized immigrants around the country.” NYT (Gift Article): Supreme Court Lifts Restrictions on L.A. Immigration Stops.
+ “In a brief concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh offers a fictional retelling of facts to downplay the disastrous impact of the court’s order. Kavanaugh claims that ICE agents are merely conducting ‘brief investigative stops’ to ‘check the immigration status’ of those whose occupations are ‘attractive to illegal immigrants.’ … No matter what the justice ‘would like to believe,’ Sotomayor writes, the truth is that ICE is ‘not conducting brief stops for questioning.’ Its agents are ‘seizing people using firearms, physical violence, and warehouse detentions.’ Moreover, Kavanaugh’s position would effectively compel all Latinos ‘to carry enough documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely’ at risk of indefinite detention. ‘The Constitution,’ Sotomayor writes, ‘does not permit the creation of such a second-class citizenship status.'” The Constitution doesn’t. This court’s shadow docket does. Slate: The Supreme Court Just Let ICE Detain Americans Based on Race.
+ “The ruling, on the so-called shadow docket, is yet another in a long string of cases since the spring in which the GOP appointees have allowed the Trump administration’s power grabs. From firing federal workers and agency heads to deporting people to dangerous countries without due process, the court’s majority has waived aside precedent, clear statutory language, and even constitutional protections in order to give this president increasing power. This time, the pesky thing standing in the way was the Fourth Amendment.” MoJo: Supreme Court Blesses Racial Profiling by ICE. America is becoming a shadow of itself.
