Sotomayor Suggests Kavanaugh Has a Blind Spot

Sonia Sotomayor didn't name Brett Kavanaugh, but she clearly singled out her fellow Supreme Court justice for criticism in public comments, reports Bloomberg Law. Speaking at a University of Kansas law event this week, Sotomayor spoke about a 2025 decision in which the court let the Trump administration resume broad immigration sweeps in Los Angeles.

• "I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops," Sotomayor said, a reference to Kavanaugh's concurring opinion. "This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn't really know any person who works by the hour."

Kavanaugh, she suggested, may not grasp the impact on hourly workers who lose pay when detained, per USA Today. "Those hours that they took you away, nobody's paying that person," she said. "And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper." Kavanaugh had characterized the interactions as "typically brief," with legal residents "promptly" released. Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that Americans should not accept a system where the government can seize "anyone who looks Latino [and] speaks Spanish," which she said upends decades of court precedent.