Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has walked back pointed remarks she made about a colleagues upbringing after her comments were widely interpreted as a class-based swipe at Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
According to Breitbart, Sotomayor issued a statement through the Supreme Court acknowledging that she had gone too far while criticizing an opinion Kavanaugh wrote last year relating to a decision that allowed President Donald Trumps administration to conduct broad immigration sweeps in Los Angeles, California, as NBC News reported. In that statement, she conceded, At a recent appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law, I referred to a disagreement with one of my colleagues in a prior case, but I made remarks that were inappropriate, adding, I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague.
Sotomayors original remarks came during an April 7 event at the University of Kansas School of Law, where she discussed a dispute over immigration enforcement policy without naming Kavanaugh directly. During the event, she recalled how one of her colleagues had written that these are only temporary stops, a clear reference to Kavanaughs concurrence in a high-profile immigration case, Bloomberg Law reported.
This is from a man whose parents were professionals, Sotomayor added. And probably doesnt really know any person who works by the hour. In that Sept. 8 emergency order, issued without a majority rationale, the justices temporarily halted lower court rulings that had barred immigration agents from targeting individuals based solely on language, occupation, race, or presence at locations such as car washes or bus stops.
In his concurrence, Kavanaugh argued that legal residents encounters with immigration agents are typically brief, and that affected individuals promptly go free. Sotomayor countered that such encounters carry real economic consequences for working-class Americans, saying, Those hours that they took you away, nobodys paying that person, and, And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper.
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