Supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testifies before the Senate judiciary committee. Photograph: Pool/Reuters
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote a dissent in a case involving mail-in ballots where she needled her conservative colleague, Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Last year, Kavanaugh penned an opinion giving more leeway to immigration agents by claiming that they rarely take American citizens into custody, and if by mistake one is taken, they're released very quickly.
Slate legal reporter and analyst Mark Joseph Stern noticed that in Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections, Jackson added an interesting citation in footnote eight.
"Contemporary commentators predicted that our decision in Lyons would close the door to 'a broad range of analogous lawsuits' aimed at systemic misconduct and abuse on the part of law enforcement," Jackson wrote, referencing the necessary information. "That prediction proved accurate. Today, courts routinely rely on Lyons to deny plaintiffs standing to seek injunctions against future police behavior. See, e.g., J. W. ex rel. Tammy Williams v. Birmingham Bd. of Educ., 904 F. 3d 1248, 1267 (CA11 2018) (per curiam); Shain v. Ellison, 356 F. 3d 211, 216 (CA2 2004); Whitfield v. Ridgeland, 876 F. Supp. 2d 779, 787– 788 (SD Miss. 2012)."
The final citation she mentioned was the direct attack.
"See also Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, 606 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring) (slip op., at 4) (concluding that, under Lyons, Latino plaintiffs who were 'stopped for immigration questioning allegedly without reasonable suspicion of unlawful presence' lacked standing to seek an injunction)."
"She isn't letting this one go," commented Stern.
"I’m trading this now and it’s making my day better," The Nation's legal analyst Elie Mystal added on BlueSky.