Most justices keep their complaints about the court’s rulings inside written dissents. Justice Sonia Sotomayor took hers to Mount Vernon. She said Saturday that she hopes the presidential immunity decision is overturned in her lifetime, according to The Hill’s account of the event. The Sotomayor immunity ruling debate just got a very public new chapter.
She was speaking at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in Virginia, as part of a civics education talk with Louise Dubé, the CEO of iCivics. It was one session in the estate’s multi-day George Washington Symposium, part of its America 250 celebration.
The Sotomayor immunity comments that made headlines
Sotomayor’s remarks started as a joke, or at least she framed them that way. “I dissent a lot. I’m hoping that the court will take back some of the crazy things that it’s done,” she told the crowd. Then came the wink: “I’m only joking — maybe not.”
She did not leave it there. “No, seriously,” she continued. “I’ve spoken openly about this, there’s some opinions that I hope in my lifetime will get overturned. The immunity case is one of them.”
That is about as blunt as it gets from the bench. Usually, justices save their criticism of past rulings for written dissents, not for a crowd at a historic estate.
Why the Supreme Court immunity case matters
The 2024 decision held that former presidents cannot be prosecuted for many acts tied to their official duties. It split the court largely 6-3, with Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting. Sotomayor wrote the dissent herself.
In that opinion, she warned the ruling “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law,” as USA Today reported. So Saturday’s comment is not a new position. Instead, it is the same dissent, now said out loud in public.
A “rough patch” for the rule of law
Most of her appearance was about teaching kids how government works. She described the country as in a “rough patch” for the rule of law and civic discourse, per Yahoo News. Her view of the presidential immunity decision fits that broader worry about the rule of law.
She also acknowledged how much has shifted at the court. “There have been some systemic changes in my court’s jurisprudence in many areas of law,” she said.
She even touched this week’s elections, though only on turnout. “We saw the outpouring of voters in on Tuesday,” she said. She made no direct comment on who won. Democrats took both chambers of Congress on Nov. 3, according to CBS News. The court has also been in the news on election matters lately, as when it turned down a bid to sideline 20,000 California mail ballots.
What the Sotomayor immunity ruling talk changes
Does this change anything legally? No. A justice saying she hopes for a reversal does not set one in motion, and our research found no pending case that would revisit the immunity ruling. Overturning a precedent takes a majority of the court, and the current majority is the one that wrote it.
Here’s the thing: the immunity decision touches the question of how far a president’s legal exposure reaches for official acts, and that is a question for anyone who cares about who answers to the law.
Still, it does change the conversation. The timing is hard to ignore. Democrats are about to control Congress for the second half of Trump’s term, and one of the court’s three liberals is telling the country she thinks a major ruling about presidential power was wrong. For more on that dynamic, see our look at whether Trump can govern without Congress if Democrats win. Expect that clip to travel.
One caution on sourcing: no official transcript or video of the event has surfaced yet. The quotes above come from press accounts, and outlets vary slightly in wording. However, the core message is the same in all of them.
So what happens next? Likely a round of reaction from the White House, Republicans in Congress, and maybe a few of her colleagues. If any justice answers her, that would be a story in itself. Meanwhile, the Sotomayor immunity ruling fight is far from settled, and our Election Eve brief shows how much else is in play.
The question everyone will ask next: was she joking? By her own words, maybe not.
