Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts with Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor on March 7, 2024. SHAWN THEW/Pool via REUTERS
During an April speech at the University of Alabama Law School, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor sounded the alarm about the number of emergency appeals to SCOTUS coming from the second Trump administration.
The Barack Obama appointee told attendees, "We've done it to ourselves. The newspapers are filled with reports about how many emergency motions we are receiving. It's unprecedented in the Court's history.”
Sotomayor noted that there is "disagreement" among justices over whether Trump administration policies being blocked or held up in the lower federal courts merit examination by the High Court.
The justice explained, "There are members of my Court.... who believe that when Congress passes a law, it causes Congress and the people irreparable harm to have that law ignored.... It has changed the paradigm on the Court."
Newsweek's Jenna Sundel points out that Sotomayor "expressed similar concerns last year in a dissent to a decision related to the government's ability to remove illegal immigrants to countries other than the ones listed on their removal orders."
According to Sundel, the second Trump Administration "has filed around 30 emergency applications with the Supreme Court over the past 15 months, and the Court has ruled in its favor more than 80 percent of the time."
The Hill's Tolu Talabi, covering Sotomayor's University of Alabama speech on April 10, notes, "The administration has appealed cases related to Trump's immigration directives and his administration's firings of members of independent federal agencies. The administration says it is a result of federal district judges overstepping their authority to block Trump's agenda, while the president's critics say the judicial decisions against his administration reflect it acting lawlessly."