Justice Alito rips Jackson a new one over 'utterly irresponsible' solo dissent

Justice Alito and DEI appointee Jackson

Justice Samuel Alito just unloaded on Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's latest solo dissent, and he didn't hold back on Biden's autopen D.E.I. appointee.

Alito's concurrence, joined by Gorsuch and Thomas, said Jackson's rhetoric "lacks restraint." He torched claims that terminating temporary protected status for Haitian migrants was driven by racial bias against non-white immigrants. 

No, wait, this time it was even better: Alito ripped into Jackson's lone dissent in the high-stakes Louisiana redistricting fight on Monday, labeling her arguments "baseless and insulting" after the Court moved to fast-track its recent ruling ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Writing in a concurring opinion joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, Alito directly slapped down Jackson, declaring that her "dissent in this suit levels charges that cannot go unanswered."

"The dissent goes on to claim that our decision represents an unprincipled use of power," Alito wrote, adding that that was a "groundless and utterly irresponsible charge."

This latest clash just underscores how isolated Jackson has become on the bench, mainly because she isn't the brightest woman, [whatever that is, I'm not a biologist] on the SCOTUS bench. She didn't just split from the conservative majority; she went rogue from her two liberal colleagues too, who refused to sign on to her rant. Jackson unloaded on the Court for supposed overreach, continuing her habit of solo dissents where the Biden pick blasts every big majority decision that happens to go the way of President Trump and the Republicans.

In Monday's unsigned order, the Court cleared the way for Louisiana officials to quickly redo their congressional map, a move expected to boost Republican representation in the state ahead of the midterms.

Alito pointed out that dragging out the 6-3 ruling from last month, which tightened up Section Two of the Voting Rights Act by calling out Louisiana's map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, served zero practical purpose. Jackson's excuses for delaying the landmark decision were "trivial at best" and "baseless and insulting," he said.

"The dissent accuses the Court of 'unshackl[ing]' itself from 'constraints,'" Alito wrote. "It is the dissent’s rhetoric that lacks restraint."

Jackson had clutched her pearls, warning that the Court's action risked meddling in an active election and creating the "appearance of partiality," all while ignoring the voting and legal mess already happening in Louisiana.

Legal watchers noted the unusually sharp tone from Alito, figuring it showed some real internal tension boiling over. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley put it plainly: "Justice Alito had had enough." Professor Turley explained that Alito shredded Jackson's lame 32-day procedural objection, calling it a "trivial" nitpick that put form over substance, especially since nobody asked for reconsideration. It would have meant waiting around for no reason while the other parties had urgent need to get the map finalized.

He added that Alito was particularly fed up with Jackson's "unprincipled" smear against the Court. The whole thing stems from the standard 32-day procedural window before a judgment drops to lower courts. Alito made clear that rule is flexible and mainly exists for rehearing petitions, which weren't coming here anyway.

Now Louisiana is in full scramble mode to roll out the new map, with ballots already mailed and the primary on pause. 

This decision will ripple across the country as other states scramble to get their own maps in order for the upcoming elections.

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Freshman Katanji Brown Jackson scolds senior colleagues after court deals with routine police stop case

KBJ still doesn't know if she's a woman

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a woman who isn't certain what a woman is because she isn't a biologist, accused the Supreme Court majority on Monday of overstepping its role to "wordsmith" a lower court in Washington, D.C. in a pointed break from her colleagues in a Fourth Amendment case about whether a police officer had reasonable suspicion to stop a man. 

Jackson, a Biden autopen appointee and the least senior of all justices, was the only one to defend the D.C. appeals court, which had found last year that the officer improperly stopped the man while he was in a vehicle. The Supreme Court reversed the lower court's decision, approving the police stop because common sense prevailed.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee and the high court's most senior liberal justice, also broke with the majority but declined to join Jackson's dissent, further isolating Jackson as an outlier even among the liberal justices.

The Supreme Court’s decision emphasized that police officers have the broad ability to rely on a "totality of the circumstances" when making stops, noting that sometimes seemingly trivial standalone facts about a situation can be combined with more suspicious behavior to justify reasonable suspicion for a police stop or arrest. You know, like seeing two African men in MAGA hats, holding a hangman's noose at 2 a.m. on a sub-freezing day on a Chicago looking suspicious near a Subway Restaurant, for example.

But Jackson argued against what she said was the high court's intervention in a lower court's routine evaluation of which facts are relevant and which are not. "I cannot fathom why that kind of factbound [sic] determination warranted correction by this Court," D.E.I. Jackson wrote.

The case arose from a 2023 dispatch call to Washington, D.C., police at 2 a.m. reporting a suspicious vehicle. When an officer arrived on scene, two people ran from the car while the remaining passenger slowly began backing out of the parking lot with a door still open. The D.C. attorney general's office argued on behalf of police that this "totality" of facts amounted to reasonable suspicion to stop the person who remained in the car.

The Supreme Court’s unsigned per curiam opinion [Latin for "by the court" -- is a judicial decision issued by an appellate court, e.g., US Supreme Court of a federal/state appeals court, that isn't attributed to any specific individual judge or justice as the author. Instead, it is presented as the opinion of the court as a whole (or the panel of judges who heard the case)], said the lower court improperly ignored that two people fled the vehicle before the third person was stopped by an officer. 

Jackson said the D.C. appeals court had done basic "culling" of facts to reach its conclusion that the stop was unwarranted.

"Under these circumstances, with only seconds to decide whether to intervene, the officer was entirely justified in detaining the driver," lawyers for the police argued. They added that "within moments of stopping the driver, the officer observed a smashed window and punched-out ignition, confirming that the vehicle had been stolen."

While Jackson has become known for aggressively supporting court intervention in broader constitutional fights involving presidential power, in this case, her dissent emphasized a need for judicial restraint. Jackson argued that the lower court properly considered the Fourth Amendment, which says people have a right to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." 

She said the case was not worthy of taking the "unusual step of summary reversal." But what does she know? She doesn't even know what a woman is.

"I am not sure why our Court sees fit to intervene in this case, let alone to do so summarily," Jackson said. "If the intervention reflects a worry that the District of Columbia Court of Appeals (DCCA) misunderstands the Fourth Amendment’s totality-of-the-circumstances analysis, that worry seems unfounded."

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