A rare flash of courtroom tension between two Supreme Court justices has been attributed to a simple miscommunication, the court announced Friday, after Justice Samuel Alito publicly and sharply rebuked Justice Sonia Sotomayor during Thursday's opinion announcements.
The court's public information office, in a statement provided to NPR, was unambiguous about what happened: "Justice Alito was notified in advance by Justice Sotomayor's chambers that she would be reading a dissent from the bench. It was a misunderstanding on Justice Alito's part."
The friction unfolded Thursday as the justices handed down rulings in three significant cases. Alito had just finished presenting his majority opinion — a decision siding with the Trump administration's practice of turning away migrants at U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry before they can formally seek asylum — when Sotomayor rose to deliver an oral summary of her dissenting view. What followed stunned veteran court observers: Alito launched into an impromptu rebuttal from the bench, something NPR reported no member of the press corps could recall witnessing before.
"There is much that I would have added to my bench statement had I known there would be a dissent read," Alito said. NPR described his expression at that moment as looking "much as if he had just bitten into a lemon."
The asylum policy at the center of the underlying case had also been employed during the Obama administration before lower courts struck it down, NPR noted. Alito's ruling reinstated the approach under the current administration.
Standard Supreme Court protocol calls for a justice planning an oral dissent to notify both the chief justice and the majority opinion's author in writing beforehand. The court's Friday statement confirmed that such notification had in fact been sent from Sotomayor's chambers — meaning Alito's apparent surprise reflected his own failure to register it rather than any procedural breach by Sotomayor.
The episode arrives at a particularly charged moment, with the justices set to release their remaining — and most consequential — opinions of the term in the coming week, according to NPR.
Informational content only, not legal advice. Consult a licensed immigration attorney.