They Are All Just Dumb, Mean and Racist

In Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, the Supreme Court allowed immigration agents to stop people based on apparent ethnicity, language spoken, type of work, and location. It came as a one paragraph shadow docket order. No argument, no briefing, no written opinion. Brett Kavanaugh then attached a ten page concurrence to it, which is why these are now called Kavanaugh stops.

Hawk walks through Adam Serwer’s Atlantic piece, The See No Evil Supreme Court, and the framework Serwer names the neo Korematsu doctrine: if any non racial explanation for a policy can be constructed, however hypothetical, the racial animus behind it stops mattering legally. Serwer traces it from Trump v. Hawaii through Louisiana v. Callais and the TPS ruling, and contrasts it with Masterpiece Cakeshop, where hostile statements by officials counted for everything.

Sotomayor’s September dissent is the payoff, and Hawk reads from it.

There is also footage circulating of agents in the back of a truck identifying people in traffic by appearance, using language that makes the criteria explicit.