Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasts 'narrow-minded' judging on SCOTUS

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson unloaded on her Supreme Court colleagues Friday in a series of sharp dissents, castigating what she called a "pure textualism" approach to interpreting laws, which she said had become a pretext for securing their desired outcomes, and implying the conservative justices have strayed from their oath by showing favoritism to "moneyed interests."

The attack on the court's conservative majority by the junior justice and member of the liberal wing is notably pointed and aggressive but stopped short of getting personal. It laid bare the stark divisions on the court and pent-up frustration in the minority over what Jackson described as inconsistent and unfair application of precedent by those in power.

Jackson took particular aim at Justice Neil Gorsuch's majority opinion in a case brought by a retired Florida firefighter with Parkinson's disease who had tried to sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act after her former employer, the City of Sanford, canceled extended health insurance coverage for retirees who left the force before serving 25 years because of a disability.

Gorsuch wrote that the landmark law only protects "qualified individuals" and that retirees don't count. The ADA defines the qualified class as those who "can perform the essential functions of the employment position that such individual holds or desires."

https://www.yahoo.com/news/justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-blasts-213100074.html

[Walleye]

1. More of this, please, Justice Jackson

[Polybius]

2. From the article:

It was joined by all the court's conservatives and liberal Justice Elena Kagan.

So she is blasting Kagan too?

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Deadline: Legal Blog- Justice Jackson mounts a lonely crusade at the Supreme Court

Judicial debates are often done in footnotes. I am NOT a fan of textualism and my inner law nerd agrees with Justice Jackson.

Justice Jackson mounts a lonely crusade at the Supreme Court

This week’s Deadline: Legal Newsletter examines what a footnote can tell us about the state of play among the justices.
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— Phyllis B Kantor (@wiselady11.bsky.social) 2025-06-21T01:05:02.904Z

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/supreme-court-ketanji-brown-jackson-dissent-deadline-newsletter-rcna214180

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the footnote in question. It came in her dissent from a decision Friday in a case called Stanley v. City of Sanford. Led by Justice Neil Gorsuch (Jackson’s sometimes-partner in certain libertarian-ish side-quests), the majority ruled against Karyn Stanley, a former firefighter who had sued a Florida city over health-insurance retirement benefits.

But disagreement over statutory interpretation prompted a heated exchange between the majority and the dissent. Gorsuch said Jackson bucked “textualism,” referring to the strict reading of statutes without regard to other considerations, like congressional intent behind the law. The Trump appointee accused the Biden appointee of doing so in an attempt to “secure the result” she sought.

That amounts to fighting words in a profession that prides itself on the narrative that judges decide cases through neutral mechanisms without regard to outcomes.

Jackson fought back in that footnote — footnote 12, to be exact. She said Gorsuch’s accusation of motivated reasoning “stems from an unfortunate misunderstanding of the judicial role.” Indeed, she said, accounting for congressional intent helps avoid injecting one’s view into the law. “By contrast,” she wrote, “pure textualism’s refusal to try to understand the text of a statute in the larger context of what Congress sought to achieve turns the interpretive task into a potent weapon for advancing judicial policy preferences.” That is, it’s the majority’s approach that lets judges reach their preferred results.

To be sure, debates over textualism and the judicial role aren’t new. Indeed, Jackson’s predecessor, Stephen Breyer, famously dueled on the subject with Gorsuch’s predecessor, Antonin Scalia.

Textualism has been used by Scalia and others to ignore the intent of congress to get at the desired result. I applaud Justice Jackson for this dissent