Among the onslaught of judicial rulings issued by courts in response to the Trump administration’s attempts to expand the president’s powers, a singular theme is emerging: Judges are pissed off.
Encapsulating that ire most succinctly of late was Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson at the Supreme Court. In a scorching dissent to the conservative majority’s approval of the Trump administration’s enforcement of draconian passport restrictions for transgender people on Nov. 6, the justice called out the greater pattern of abuse of law that all Americans — including those sitting beside her on the highest court in the land — are witnessing.
“Such senseless sidestepping of the obvious equitable outcome has become an unfortunate pattern. So, too, has my own refusal to look the other way when basic principles are selectively discarded,” she wrote. “This Court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification. Because I cannot acquiesce to this pointless but painful perversion of our equitable discretion, I respectfully dissent.”
Even the formal legal language can’t hide the pointed anger and frustration in her opinion. And she is not the only one.
