Sotomayor apologizes for Kavanaugh’s ‘inappropriate’ comments
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has apologized for “inappropriate” and “hurtful” comments she made about Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has apologized for “inappropriate” and “hurtful” comments she made about her colleague, Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“I regret my hurtful comments and have apologized to my colleagues,” Sotomayor said in a statement on April 15.
Her statement came about a week after she criticized Kavanaugh’s opinion in the court’s 2025 decision on immigration-related moratoriums in Los Angeles. The suspension sparked widespread protests in California, with many accusing it of racial profiling.
Over a dissent by three liberal justices, including Justice Sotomayor, the court blocked a lower court’s ruling that federal agents must have reasonable suspicion that the person they are interrogating is in the country illegally.
“In that incident, a colleague wrote, ‘This is only a temporary suspension,'” Sotomayor said in a public appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law. “This is coming from a guy whose parents were professionals. You probably don’t really know anyone who buys time.”
Sotomayor added that of those detained, “no one is paying them for the time they are taken away.” “That’s the difference between what he and the kids eat that night and maybe a cold dinner,” she told the audience, Bloomberg Law reported.
In his opinion for the court, Kavanaugh said legal immigrants’ contact with immigration officials is “usually brief” and affected individuals are “promptly released.”
The legal challenge comes after the Trump administration ramped up immigration enforcement across California starting in June 2025, expanding from people with criminal records to broader sweeps of anyone in the country without authorization.
In his 2025 dissent, Sotomayor slammed the court’s decision.
“We should not live in a country where the government can arrest anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and works for low wages,” Sotomayor wrote. “Rather than stand by and watch our constitutional freedoms disappear, I will oppose it.”
“It’s shocking to see a justice criticize a colleague outside of an opinion, in public, and in somewhat personal terms,” court observer and attorney David Rutt said after Sotomayor’s remarks in Kansas last week.
“While the justices do pursue each other in their opinions, they typically ‘keep it on paper,’ meaning they do not address their grievances in other contexts,” Rutt recently wrote on Substack.
In public remarks on April 9, Sotomayor said he had civil relationships with “virtually all” of his fellow judges and considered many of them friends.
Sotomayor said his experience as a trial court judge has helped him understand the real people behind the cases he now decides, but he’s not sure all of his colleagues understand them.
“When you read the transcript, you still see people,” Sotomayor said, referring to the transcript of proceedings held in trial court, where individuals involved in the underlying events of the case can testify. “I don’t know how many of my colleagues do that.”
Contributor: Aisha Bagchi.
