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Sonia Sotomayor

Thursday 2nd of October 2025

Affirmative action After  extensive discovery and two lengthy trials, neither SFFA nor the majority can point to a single example of an underrepresented racial minority who was admitted to Harvard or UNC on the basis of “race alone.” Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action At bottom, the six unelected members of today’s majority upend the status quo based on their policy preferences about what race in America should be like, but is not, and their preferences for a veneer of colorblindness in a society where race has always mattered and continues to matter in fact and in law. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action At bottom, without any new factual or legal justification, the Court overridess its longstanding holding that diversity in higher education is of compelling value.  To avoid public accountability for its choice, the Court seeks cover behind a unique measurability requirement of its own creation. None of this Court’s precedents, however, requires that a compelling interest meet some threshold level of precision to be deemed sufficiently compelling. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action [T]he Court’s holding is based on the fiction that racial inequality has a predictable cutoff date. Equality is an ongoing project in a society where racial inequality persists. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action The majority’s true objection appears to be that a limited use of race in college admissions does, in fact, achieve what it is designed to achieve: It helps equalize opportunity and advances respondents’ objectives by increasing the number of underrepresented racial minorities on college campuses, particularly Black and Latino students. This is unacceptable, the Court says, because racial groups that are not underrepresented “would be admitted in greater numbers” without these policies. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action This supposed recognition that universities can, in some situations, consider race in application essays is nothing but an attempt to put lipstick on a pig. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action Today, the Court concludes that indifference to race is the only constitutionally permissible means to achieve racial equality in college admissions.  That interpretation of the Fourteenth Amend- ment is not only contrary to precedent and the entire teachings of our history … but is also grounded in the illusion that racial inequality was a problem of a  different generation. … Ignoring race will not equalize a society that is racially unequal. What was true in the 1860s, and again in 1954, is true today: Equality requires acknowledgment of inequality. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Affirmative action Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits. In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race  has always mattered and continues to matter. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Discrimination The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination. As members of the judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action © 2023 Kwiple.com
Gun control When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck, Sonja Sotomayer, dissent in Garland v. Cargill, in which the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority ruled that bump-stock-enabled semiautomatic rifles can't be banned because, technically, they are not machine guns, which can, even though they can be fired at the same rate of speed as machine guns  © 2024 Kwiple.com
Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution In the end, then, under the majority’s new paradigm, whether the President will be exempt from legal liability for murder, assault, theft, fraud, or any other reprehensible and outlawed criminal act will turn on whether he committed that act in his official capacity, such that the answer to the immunity question will always and inevitably be: It depends. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent, Trump v. United States © 2024 Kwiple.com
Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today. Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent, Trump v. United States © 2024 Kwiple.com
Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution The President of the United States  is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world.  When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now  will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent, Trump v. United States © 2024 Kwiple.com
Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution Relying on little more than its own  misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent, Trump v. United States © 2024 Kwiple.com
Racial inequality Today’s decision further entrenches racial inequality by making these pipelines to leadership roles less diverse. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Racial inequality The ultimate goal is racial equality of opportunity. Sonia Sotomayor, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Separation of powers Beyond the majority’s legal errors, its ruling reveals a far more fundamental problem: This Court’s repeated failure to appreciate that its decisions can threaten the separation of powers. Here, that threat comes from the Court’s mistaken conclusion that Congress cannot assign a certain public-rights matter for initial adjudication to the Executive because it must come only to the Judiciary. The majority today upends longstanding precedent and the established practice of its coequal partners in our tripartite system of government. Sonia Sotomayor, disSent in SEC v Jarkesy © 2024 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court Last night, the Court silently acquiesced in a State’s enactment of a law that flouts nearly 50 years of federal precedents. Today, the Court belatedly explains that it declined to grant relief because of procedural complexities of the State’s own invention. Because the Court’s failure to act rewards tactics designed to avoid judicial review and inflicts significant harm on the applicants and on women seeking abortions in Texas, I dissent. Sonia Sotomayor, September 1, 2021, on the decision by Justices Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas to not enjoin an unconstitutional Texas law that banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and allowed Texas to evade judicial scrutiny by empowering bounty hunters to enforce it © 2021 Kwiple.com
 
Supreme Court Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts? I don’t see how it is possible. Sonia Sotomajor, December 1, 2021, during oral arguments in the Mississippi abortion case, the latest in a series of cases conservatives on the Court are using to whittle away the right to an abortion © 2021 Kwiple.com