Legal expert slams Supreme Court Justice for attempt to 'narrow the forces he unleashed'

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Kavanaugh's Illinois National Guard solo concurrence, he adds footnote that seems to try to calm outrage over his solo opinion in the CA ICE emergency ruling that led to some calling race-based immigration arrests "Kavanaugh stops."

Legal expert slams Supreme Court Justice for attempt to 'narrow the forces he unleashed' www.rawstory.com/brett-kavana...

— Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan.bsky.social) 2025-12-24T01:17:20.647Z

https://www.rawstory.com/brett-kavanaugh-2674826052/

The Supreme Court dropped a bombshell on Tuesday by handing President Donald Trump a rare loss, ruling 6-3 to deny a stay on deploying the National Guard to Illinois — but the rebuke of Trump was not the only thing some legal experts noticed in the opinion.

Specifically, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who drafted a concurrence with the majority on one of the key issues in the decision, made statements in his opinion that suggest he may regret one of the most controversial court decisions in recent months.

In a ruling in September that stayed a lower court block on certain kinds of immigration raids in California, Kavanaugh authored a concurrence in which he appeared to endorse profiling by federal agents outright, while simultaneously denying that American citizens have anything to fear from this. "The Government sometimes makes brief investigative stops to check the immigration status of those who gather in locations where people are hired for day jobs; who work or appear to work in jobs such as construction, landscaping, agriculture, or car washes that often do not require paperwork and are therefore attractive to illegal immigrants; and who do not speak much if any English," he wrote.

This ruling sparked a wave of outrage, and several legal and political observers began calling immigration enforcement based on racial or ethnic profiling "Kavanaugh stops," and tallying up the growing number of alleged incidents of this type occurring under the Trump administration.

All of this may have stung the justice, because he appeared to qualify or walk back this sentiment in his concurrence in the Illinois case.

"The basic constitutional rules governing that dispute are longstanding and clear: The Fourth Amendment requires that immigration stops must be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause, and officers must not employ excessive force," wrote Kavanaugh. "Moreover, the officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity."

This change of tone was not lost on New York University law professor and former Defense Department special counsel Ryan Goodman.

"Kavanaugh goes out of his way to pen a footnote not having to deal with the case at hand," Goodman wrote on X. "He appears to be trying to narrow the forces he unleashed with his prior opinion allowing for race- and ethnicity-based #KavanaughStops."

ICE and the other goons have relied on the Kavanaugh opinion to racially profile non-white individuals. Due process applies to everyone including people who are not white. We will see this opinion cited in some of the cases that are pending.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Here is part of the opinion where this asshole tries to undo the damage that his prior opinion caused

ICE and other goons were relying on Kavanaugh's prior opinion to racially profile non-whites.

NOTED: In Kavanaugh's Illinois National Guard solo concurrence, he adds footnote that seems to try to calm outrage over his solo opinion in the CA ICE emergency ruling that led to some calling race-based immigration arrests "Kavanaugh stops." Earlier: www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein.bsky.social) 2025-12-23T21:09:56.059Z

Due process applies to non-whites as well as white people

[wolfie001]

3. He's a measured bootlicker....

......and alcoholic.

[AZJonnie]

2. Wooooooooowwwww ... whiplash!

[flashman13]

4. This "minor" little footnote could have wide spread ramifications. It puts ICE on notice that their tactics are illegal.

[FakeNoose]

5. It just occurred to Brett Kavanaugh that he's going to outlive Chump

[OldBaldy1701E]

8. And, that the orange gibbon may not get to be King For Life!

Which means he can still be held accountable for what he has done to our democracy.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

6. ICE employs the "Kavanaugh stops" ruling to drag brown people off the street

Im glad it stings Kavanaugh

[appmanga]

10. I'll go ahead and mildly celebrate this reversal...

...because a) it shows there's some sensitivity to how he's seen by the public, so attention is being paid by at least one justice to public sentiment; b) it shows he will reverse himself, something that's rare in most instances anywhere, but almost unknown for SC justices.

I'll take signs of hope where I can find them.

[Martin68]

7. Interesting. He's not stupid. Just guilty as hell.

[BurnDoubt]

9. I was thinking today how capricious...

this process of "interpretation" and "rendering an opinion" can be. How can we trust our Constitution to a SMALL group when one or more may be beholden to "influencers".
How many Winnebagos did it cost to make a King of a Fool? Or overturn "Black-Letter Law" to make it align with Christo-Fascist Doctrine by a Catholic majority.
If it stinks, it's because it DOES.
The SCOTUS Right Wing majority all originated in the Heritage Foundation and is taking their orders from them.
McConnell shit all over the traditional method of confirming Justices TWICE, including walking back his "the next President should be able to confirm the next Supreme Court Justice " (this close to the Election) rule.