Sotomayor had commented on Brett Kavanaugh’s upbringing while speaking at the University of Kansas
US Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor has publicly apologized to fellow justice Brett Kavanaugh over comments she made about his upbringing during an April 7 event at the University of Kansas School of Law, reported the Wall Street Journal.
While referencing Kavanaugh’s opinion supporting a September 2025 Supreme Court decision to relax restrictions on investigatory stops by federal immigration agents, Sotomayor said in a statement published by WSJ that the take was “from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”
According to the WSJ, while justices typically disagreed with one another in written opinions, speeches, and interviews, remarks did not often get personal. Justices also rarely apologized for public comments, particularly to fellow court members.
Sotomayor issued her apology, which described her comments as “hurtful,” on Wednesday April 15 in a statement published by the court.
“At a recent appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law, I referred to a disagreement with one of my colleagues in a prior case, but I made remarks that were inappropriate. I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague,” she said in the statement, which was also published by WSJ.
Per the WSJ, Kavanaugh did not respond to a request for comment.
The Supreme Court ruling in question involved a case on the court’s emergency docket. It tackled the factors federal agents could apply as a basis to stop and question people.
A district court judge had determined that federal agents were illegally profiling people based on apparent ethnicity, language spoken, and their convergence at where day laborers’ meeting places. The US administration asked the Supreme Court to remove the district court judge’s restrictions and permit immigration agents to detain people based on those factors.
Sotomayor and two Democrat-appointed judges had dissented. While most of the justices who backed the decision did not cite their reasons, Kavanaugh released a 10-page opinion.
“For stops of those individuals who are legally in the country, the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote in his opinion, a snippet of which was published by the WSJ.
