President Trump Calls on Sotomayor and Ginsburg to Recuse Themselves From His Supreme Court Cases

President Trump responded from India via Twitter on Tuesday local time to a scathing dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor released Friday that accused the conservative majority justices on the Supreme Court of being biased in favor of the Trump administration. Trump called on Sotomayor and her fellow Trump-hating Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse themselves from cases involving or relating to him.

The Roberts Court, November 30, 2018. Seated, from left to right: Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Samuel A. Alito. Standing, from left to right: Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Brett M. Kavanaugh. Photograph by Fred Schilling, Supreme Court Curator’s Office.

Trump said, ““Sotomayor accuses GOP appointed Justices of being biased in favor of Trump.” @IngrahamAngle
@FoxNews This is a terrible thing to say. Trying to “shame” some into voting her way? She never criticized Justice Ginsberg when she called me a “faker”. Both should recuse themselves……on all Trump, or Trump related, matters! While “elections have consequences”, I only ask for fairness, especially when it comes to decisions made by the United States Supreme Court!”

“Sotomayor accuses GOP appointed Justices of being biased in favor of Trump.” @IngrahamAngle @FoxNews This is a terrible thing to say. Trying to “shame” some into voting her way? She never criticized Justice Ginsberg when she called me a “faker”. Both should recuse themselves..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2020

“Sotomayor accuses GOP appointed Justices of being biased in favor of Trump.” @IngrahamAngle @FoxNews This is a terrible thing to say. Trying to “shame” some into voting her way? She never criticized Justice Ginsberg when she called me a “faker”. Both should recuse themselves..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2020

The case Sotomayor dissented in involved an appeal by the Department of Homeland Security for an injunction in a ruling against the imposition by the administration of a “public charge rule” regarding immigrants in an Illinois case that the Court has already allowed for the other 49 states. (DHS fact sheet on public charge rule.)

Sotomayor’s dissent is in the context of the growing pushback in recent years by President Trump and his administration that has found support from the Court’s conservative majority against the imposition of nationwide injunctions by individual District Court judges against Trump administration actions. The increased imposition of nationwide injunctions has fueled a belief the lower courts are acting politically as part of the anti-Trump resistance.

Sotomayor wrote in her conclusion:

Perhaps most troublingly, the Court’s recent behavior on stay applications has benefited one litigant over all others. This Court often permits executions—where the risk of irreparable harm is the loss of life—to proceed, justifying many of those decisions on purported failures “to raise any potentially meritorious claims in a timely manner.” Murphy v. Collier, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (second statement of KAVANAUGH, J.) (slip op., at 4); see also id., at ___ (ALITO, J., joined by THOMAS and GORSUCH, JJ., dissenting from grant of stay) (slip op., at 6) (“When courts do not have adequate time to consider a claim, the decisionmaking process may be compromised”); cf. Dunn v. Ray, 586 U. S. ___ (2019) (overturning the grant of a stay of execution). Yet the Court’s concerns over quick decisions wither when prodded by the Government in far less compelling circumstances—where the Government itself chose to wait to seek relief, and where its claimed harm is continuation of a 20-year status quo in one State. I fear that this disparity in treatment erodes the fair and balanced decisionmaking process that this Court must strive to protect.

I respectfully dissent.

The complete seven page dissent can be read at here at the Supreme Court.

Slate provided the Resistance translation of Sotomayor’s dissent:

Put simply: When some of the most despised and powerless among us ask the Supreme Court to spare their lives, the conservative justices turn a cold shoulder. When the Trump administration demands permission to implement some cruel, nativist, and potentially unlawful immigration restrictions, the conservatives bend over backward to give it everything it wants. There is nothing “fair and balanced” about the court’s double standard that favors the government over everyone else. And, as Sotomayor implies, this flagrant bias creates the disturbing impression that the Trump administration has a majority of the court in its pocket.