June 24, 2025
The first Black-female justice claimed her colleagues “run in a series of textualist circles” and highlighted that the majority “closes its eyes to context.
In a series of sharp dissents, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accused her Supreme Court colleagues of issuing rulings that appear to favor financial interests over their sworn duty, according to ABC News.
Brown Jackson’s criticism follows several rulings in controversial cases. For the Stanley v. City of Sanford case, a retired Florida firefighter fighting Parkinson’s disease attempted to sue the city, which employed her, under the Americans with Disabilities Act after terminating its extended health insurance coverage for retirees who left the force before serving 25 years due to disability.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his majority opinion that the civil rights law prohibiting discrimination based on disability only protects “qualified individuals,” stating retirees don’t count. “This court has long recognized that the textual limitations upon a law’s scope must be understood as no less a part of its purpose than its substantive authorizations,” Gorsuch concluded in his opinion.
The opinion was supported by all the court’s conservatives and liberal Justice Elena Kagan. However, the first Black female judge to sit on America’s highest court said she “cannot abide that narrow-minded approach” and accused her colleagues of ignoring the law, defining the qualified class as those who “can perform the essential functions of the employment position that such an individual holds or desires.”
She claimed that the Supreme Court justices “run in a series of textualist circles” and highlighted that the majority “closes its eyes to context, enactment history, and the legislature’s goals.”
The scathing comments came after the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Diamond Alternative Energy v. EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) case, ruling 7-2 in favor of fuel producers attempting to challenge the EPA’s approval of California clean vehicle emissions regulations.
Brown Jackson argued the ruling favors “moneyed interests” and curiously proposed why the court felt it was necessary to decide on it, since President Donald Trump has scaled back on the Biden-Harris administration’s environmental policies, including those catering to electric vehicle mandates in the Golden State. “This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens,” she wrote, according to NBC News.
“Also, I worry that the fuel industry’s gain comes at a reputational cost for this court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests.”
Case Western Reserve University School of Law professor Jonathan Adler noted that none of the other justices, including her liberal colleagues, signed on to her dissent. He feels such cases can be labeled as “very simplistic” — classified as either pro-business or anti-business, just due to the fact that there can be monetary interests on both sides.
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