Supreme Court

JONATHAN TURLEY: Liberal justice's swipe at Kavanaugh latest sign of SCOTUS' slipping standards

The remarks came during a discussion of Kavanaugh's concurrence in an ICE immigration detention case

By Jonathan Turley Fox News

Published April 12, 2026 8:10am EDT

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Sotomayor expresses frustration with being in ideological minority

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor discusses her frustration with being in the ideological minority on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

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Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is accustomed to unrelenting personal attacks from the Left that began with his nomination to the nation's highest court. This week, however, the ad hominem insults came not from cable news pundits or Democrats, but from his own colleague on the bench.  Justice Sonia Sotomayor used an appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law to level a personal dig at Kavanaugh as an out-of-touch elitist.

I have long criticized the growing number of public statements by justices on controversial subjects and cases, including Justice Sotomayor. However, this appearance represented a new low in lashing out at a colleague as effectively blinded by his own privilege.

In her comments, Sotomayor raised Kavanaugh's concurrence in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, an ongoing case which deals with ICE's ability to briefly detain people during immigration raids.

King Felipe VI of Spain receives Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice of The Supreme Court of the United States, at Zarzuela Palace on March 04, 2024, in Madrid, Spain. (Pablo Cuadra/Getty Images)

"I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops. This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn't really know any person who works by the hour. Those hours that they took you away, nobody's paying that person. And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper."

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