WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� has notched a string of wins on the 鈥檚 emergency docket, in part because the conservative justices believe that blocking executive policies is a blow that can’t be easily fixed, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Thursday.
The increase in emergency appeals by the Trump administration is 鈥渦nprecedented in the court鈥檚 history,鈥� she said in a speech at the University of Alabama School of Law.
The high court sided with the Trump administration in about two dozen decisions last year, often lifting the orders of lower court judges who found their policies were likely illegal on everything from immigration to steep federal funding cuts.
While designed to be short-term, those orders have largely allowed Trump to move ahead for now with key parts of his sweeping agenda.
The emergency docket, which is made up of appeals seeking quick intervention from the justices in cases that are still playing out in lower courts, is itself a source of disagreement among the justices. That spilled into public view when two other justices, liberal and conservative , publicly sparred over the emergency docket in an unusual exchange .
Sotomayor has disagreed with many of the decisions in Trump鈥檚 favor, but the conservatives who form the court’s majority often reason that blocking those policies 鈥� or laws passed by Congress 鈥� causes legal harm that can鈥檛 be easily fixed, she said. It鈥檚 a bar that鈥檚 tough for the other side to overcome, even for plaintiffs like immigrants who could be newly exposed to deportation or states where schools are losing teacher-training funding.
鈥淚f you start with the presumption that there is irreparable harm to one side, then you鈥檙e going to have more grants of emergency relief. Because the other side is going to have a much harder time,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t has changed the paradigm on the court.鈥�
Her comments provided a window into the Supreme Court decisions that are often released with little explanation. While many emergency docket orders have gone Trump’s way, the court also struck down his a central plank of his economic platform, after a longer process of full briefing and oral arguments.
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