A reflection on Juneteenth
By Robert Reich
June 20, 2025
Source: Robert Reich Substack
The Supreme Court’s recent unanimous ruling in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves.
On the surface, the ruling seems innocent enough. The court merely decided that white and straight employees who allege they’ve been discriminated against don’t need to meet a higher standard of proof than do Black or LGBTQ+ employees who sue for discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
(Prior to this ruling, some courts had required that white or straight employees demonstrate not only that they were discriminated against but that they also worked in a discriminatory environment.)
The court’s decision in Ames appears a logical extension of the 2023 ruling by its six conservative justices ending race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities across the country.
But seen against Trump’s bigoted agenda and the widening discrepancies between the political power of Black or LGBTQ+ people relative to the power of straight white people, the Ames case should trouble everyone.
Trump and his lackeys have argued that discrimination against white and straight Americans occurs under the cover of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And Trump has gone to great lengths to undo what he calls “illegal DEI”: ousting diversity officials from federal agencies and removing DEI references from government websites.
The Ames ruling could be the death knell for DEI because it makes it easier for white and straight people to argue that a DEI policy at the workplace caused an employer to discriminate against them.
The Supreme Court I got to know in the 1970s when I worked in the solicitor general’s office understood its responsibility to balance the scales of justice in favor of the less powerful — including Black people, women, and gay people.
That court understood that as majoritarian institutions, Congress and the executive branch could not always be counted on to reflect the needs of people with far less political power than straight white men.
Hence, they assumed that one of the court’s essential roles in our system of self government — indeed, the core of its moral authority — was to give extra weight to the challenges and aspirations of such minorities.
Even Nixon’s appointees — Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, and Warren Burger — seemed to understand this important counter-balancing role. Blackmun wrote the court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, and Powell and Burger joined him.
Blackmun, William Douglas, and Thurgood Marshall were the intellectual leaders of that Supreme Court. Their opinions gave the court its moral heft. They drew not only from the Constitution as written but also from their understanding of how the nation had evolved, and of the distribution of power.
Like an earlier Supreme Court that unanimously decided in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that separate schooling for Black and white children was inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional, the Supreme Court I argued before understood that America must rely on the court to protect the less powerful.
Today’s Supreme Court majority doesn’t have a clue about the court’s moral authority or its essential role in counter-balancing a distribution of power disadvantaging Black, brown, and LGBTQ+ people.
The Republican appointees to today’s Supreme Court are political hacks intent on entrenching the power of the already powerful. They have no interest in counter-balancing the majoritarian tendencies of Congress and the president.
To the contrary, as demonstrated by the Ames decision, today’s court is at best the third majoritarian branch of government.
On Juneteenth — the day we commemorate the end of slavery in the United States — it is well to ponder that there is no longer any branch of government dedicated to protecting the life chances of those with less political power due to their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, or sexual orientation.
The Supreme Court’s recent unanimous ruling in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves.
On the surface, the ruling seems innocent enough. The court merely decided that white and straight employees who allege they’ve been discriminated against don’t need to meet a higher standard of proof than do Black or LGBTQ+ employees who sue for discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
(Prior to this ruling, some courts had required that white or straight employees demonstrate not only that they were discriminated against but that they also worked in a discriminatory environment.)
The court’s decision in Ames appears a logical extension of the 2023 ruling by its six conservative justices ending race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities across the country.
But seen against Trump’s bigoted agenda and the widening discrepancies between the political power of Black or LGBTQ+ people relative to the power of straight white people, the Ames case should trouble everyone.
Trump and his lackeys have argued that discrimination against white and straight Americans occurs under the cover of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And Trump has gone to great lengths to undo what he calls “illegal DEI”: ousting diversity officials from federal agencies and removing DEI references from government websites.
The Ames ruling could be the death knell for DEI because it makes it easier for white and straight people to argue that a DEI policy at the workplace caused an employer to discriminate against them.
The Supreme Court I got to know in the 1970s when I worked in the solicitor general’s office understood its responsibility to balance the scales of justice in favor of the less powerful — including Black people, women, and gay people.
That court understood that as majoritarian institutions, Congress and the executive branch could not always be counted on to reflect the needs of people with far less political power than straight white men.
Hence, they assumed that one of the court’s essential roles in our system of self government — indeed, the core of its moral authority — was to give extra weight to the challenges and aspirations of such minorities.
Even Nixon’s appointees — Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, and Warren Burger — seemed to understand this important counter-balancing role. Blackmun wrote the court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, and Powell and Burger joined him.
Blackmun, William Douglas, and Thurgood Marshall were the intellectual leaders of that Supreme Court. Their opinions gave the court its moral heft. They drew not only from the Constitution as written but also from their understanding of how the nation had evolved, and of the distribution of power.
Like an earlier Supreme Court that unanimously decided in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that separate schooling for Black and white children was inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional, the Supreme Court I argued before understood that America must rely on the court to protect the less powerful.
Today’s Supreme Court majority doesn’t have a clue about the court’s moral authority or its essential role in counter-balancing a distribution of power disadvantaging Black, brown, and LGBTQ+ people.
The Republican appointees to today’s Supreme Court are political hacks intent on entrenching the power of the already powerful. They have no interest in counter-balancing the majoritarian tendencies of Congress and the president.
To the contrary, as demonstrated by the Ames decision, today’s court is at best the third majoritarian branch of government.
On Juneteenth — the day we commemorate the end of slavery in the United States — it is well to ponder that there is no longer any branch of government dedicated to protecting the life chances of those with less political power due to their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, or sexual orientation.
Robert Reich
Robert Bernard Reich is an American professor, author, lawyer, and political commentator. He worked in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and served as Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997 in the cabinet of President Bill Clinton. He was also a member of President Barack Obama's economic transition advisory board. Reich has been the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley since January 2006. He was formerly a lecturer at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and a professor of social and economic policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management of Brandeis University.
In a scathing dissent, Justice Jackson says the Supreme Court gives the impression it favors 'moneyed interests'
Lawrence Hurley
Fri, June 20, 2025
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson at her confirmation hearing to join the Supreme Court in Washington in 2022. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images file)
WASHINGTON — Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized her colleagues Friday in a scathing dissent in a case involving vehicle emissions regulations.
In her dissenting opinion, she argued that the court's ruling gives the impression it favors “moneyed interests” in the way it decides which cases to hear and how it rules in them. The court had ruled 7-2 in favor of fuel producers seeking to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's approval of California clean vehicle emissions regulations.
She also said she was concerned that the ruling could have "a reputational cost for this court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests."
With the Trump administration reversing course on many of former President Joe Biden's environmental policies, including those about California's electric vehicle mandates, the case is most likely moot or soon will be, Jackson wrote, making her wonder why the court felt the need to decide it.
"This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens," she wrote.
The case said the producers had legal standing to bring their claims, resting on a theory "that the court has refused to apply in cases brought by less powerful plaintiffs," she added.
The decision has little practical importance now, but in the future, it "will no doubt aid future attempts by the fuel industry to attack the Clean Air Act," she said.
"Also, I worry that the fuel industry's gain comes at a reputational cost for this court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests," she added.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has often faced claims that it is particularly receptive to arguments made by big business. The conservative justices have been especially skeptical of broad government regulations, and they have consistently made it harder for consumers and workers to bring class action lawsuits.
Last year, the court overturned a 40-year precedent much loathed by business interests that empowered federal agencies in the regulatory process.
Some legal experts have pushed back, saying such allegations are misleading.
Jackson concluded her dissent by noting what she called the court's "simultaneous aversion to hearing cases involving the potential vindication of less powerful litigants — workers, criminal defendants, and the condemned, among others."
Fri, June 20, 2025
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson at her confirmation hearing to join the Supreme Court in Washington in 2022. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images file)
WASHINGTON — Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized her colleagues Friday in a scathing dissent in a case involving vehicle emissions regulations.
In her dissenting opinion, she argued that the court's ruling gives the impression it favors “moneyed interests” in the way it decides which cases to hear and how it rules in them. The court had ruled 7-2 in favor of fuel producers seeking to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's approval of California clean vehicle emissions regulations.
She also said she was concerned that the ruling could have "a reputational cost for this court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests."
With the Trump administration reversing course on many of former President Joe Biden's environmental policies, including those about California's electric vehicle mandates, the case is most likely moot or soon will be, Jackson wrote, making her wonder why the court felt the need to decide it.
"This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this court than ordinary citizens," she wrote.
The case said the producers had legal standing to bring their claims, resting on a theory "that the court has refused to apply in cases brought by less powerful plaintiffs," she added.
The decision has little practical importance now, but in the future, it "will no doubt aid future attempts by the fuel industry to attack the Clean Air Act," she said.
"Also, I worry that the fuel industry's gain comes at a reputational cost for this court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests," she added.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has often faced claims that it is particularly receptive to arguments made by big business. The conservative justices have been especially skeptical of broad government regulations, and they have consistently made it harder for consumers and workers to bring class action lawsuits.
Last year, the court overturned a 40-year precedent much loathed by business interests that empowered federal agencies in the regulatory process.
Some legal experts have pushed back, saying such allegations are misleading.
Jackson concluded her dissent by noting what she called the court's "simultaneous aversion to hearing cases involving the potential vindication of less powerful litigants — workers, criminal defendants, and the condemned, among others."
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who authored the majority opinion, responded that a review of standing cases "disproves that suggestion." He mentioned several recent rulings in which liberal justices were in the majority, including one last year that found that anti-abortion doctors who challenged the abortion pill mifepristone did not have standing to sue.
The bottom line, he added, is that the government "may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders."
Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law whose scholarship pushes back against Jackson's theory, said it was notable that no other justices, including her two fellow liberals, signed on to her dissent.
"I don’t think this case is an example of the court being inconsistent or somehow more favorable to moneyed interests than other sorts of interests," he said in an interview. "It's not like the court has closed the door on environmental groups."
Adler, whom Jackson cited in her dissent, said it can be "very simplistic" to classify cases as pro-business or anti-business simply because there can often be wealthy interests on both sides.
The underlying case stems from the EPA's authority to issue national vehicle emissions standards under the federal Clean Air Act.
In recognition of California’s historic role in regulating emissions, the law allows the EPA to give the state a waiver from the nationwide standards so it can adopt its own. The case focused on a request made by California in 2012 that EPA approve new regulations, not the state's 2024 plan to eliminate gasoline-powered cars by 2035, for which it also sought a waiver.
The Republican-controlled Congress voted this month to revoke that waiver.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasts 'narrow-minded' judging on SCOTUS:
ANALYSIS
DEVIN DWYER
Fri, June 20, 2025
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasts 'narrow-minded' judging on SCOTUS: ANALYSIS
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.
Erin Schaff/Pool/Getty Images - PHOTO: Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch stands during a group photo of the Justices at the Supreme Court, April 23, 2021.
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."
"This court has long recognized that the textual limitations upon a law's scope must be understood as no less a part of its purpose than its substantive authorizations," Gorsuch concluded in his opinion in Stanley v. City of Sanford. It was joined by all the court's conservatives and liberal Justice Elena Kagan.
Jackson fired back, accusing her colleagues of reaching a "stingy outcome" and willfully ignoring the "clear design of the ADA to render a ruling that plainly counteracts what Congress meant to -- and did -- accomplish" with the law. She said they had "run in a series of textualist circles" and that the majority "closes its eyes to context, enactment history and the legislature's goals."
"I cannot abide that narrow-minded approach," she wrote.
Alex Wong/Getty Images - PHOTO: Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson poses for an official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building, Oct. 7, 2022.
Gorsuch retorted that Jackson was simply complaining textualism didn't get her the outcome she wanted, prompting Jackson to take the rare step of using a lengthy footnote to accuse her colleague of the same.
Saying the majority has a "unfortunate misunderstanding of the judicial role," Jackson said her colleagues' "refusal" to consider Congress' intent behind the ADA "turns the interpretative task into a potent weapon for advancing judicial policy preferences."
"By 'finding' answers in ambiguous text," she wrote, "and not bothering to consider whether those answers align with other sources of statutory meaning, pure textualists can easily disguise their own preferences."
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who joined parts of Jackson's dissent, explicitly did not sign-on to the footnote.
Justice Elena Kagan, a member of the liberal wing, joined the conservative majority in all three cases in which Jackson dissented, but she did not explain her views. In 2015, Kagan famously said, "we're all textualists now" of the court, but years later disavowed that approach over alleged abuse by conservative jurists.
Alex Wong/Getty Images - PHOTO: United States Supreme Court pose for their official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building, Oct. 7, 2022.
MORE: Supreme Court allows Trump to begin removing 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela
In two other cases decided Friday, Jackson accused her colleagues of distorting the law to benefit major American businesses and in so doing "erode the public trust."
She dissented from Justice Amy Coney Barrett's majority opinion siding with major tobacco manufacturer, R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co., that gives retailers the ability to sue the Food and Drug Administration over the denial of new product applications for e-cigarettes.
Barrett concluded that a federal law meant to regulate the manufacture and distribution of new tobacco products also allows retailers who would sell the products to seek judicial review of an adverse FDA decision.
Jackson blasted the conclusion as "illogical" again taking her colleagues to task for not sufficiently considering Congress' intent or longstanding precedent. "Every available indictor reveals that Congress intended to permit manufacturers -- not retailers -- to challenge the denial," she wrote.
Of the court's 7-2 decision by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, giving gasoline producers the right to sue California over limits on emission-producing cars, Jackson said her colleagues were favoring the fuel industry over "less powerful plaintiffs."
"This case gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens," she wrote.
Jackson argued that the case should have been mooted, since the Trump administration withdrew EPA approval for California's emissions standards thereby eliminating any alleged harm to the auto and fuel industry.
Al Drago/Getty Images - PHOTO: The Supreme Court, Sept. 28, 2020, in Washington, D.C.
"Those of us who are privileged to work inside the Court must not lose sight of this institution's unique mission and responsibility: to rule without fear or favor," she wrote, admonishing her colleagues.
The court is next scheduled to convene Thursday, June 26, to release another round of opinions in cases argued this term. Decisions are expected in a dispute over online age verification for adult websites, parental opt-out rights for kids in public schools exposed to LGBTQ themes, and, the scope of nationwide injunctions against President Donald Trump's second-term policies.
Justice Jackson mounts a lonely crusade at the Supreme Court
Jordan Rubin
Fri, June 20, 2025
Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. What can a footnote, of all things, tell us about the state of the Supreme Court and various splits among the justices?
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.
But Jackson wasn’t speaking on behalf of the court’s beleaguered Democratic minority. In fact, she was all alone. Justice Elena Kagan joined Gorsuch in the majority, while Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined parts of Jackson’s dissent but explicitly didn’t join her footnote.
What’s going on here? Keep in mind that an intra-Democratic split, tame as it may be, has been brewing for some time. I had just written about its appearance in the Skrmetti case on gender-affirming care on Wednesday, and it also surfaced in multiple cases decided Friday. In one of those new decisions, on emissions regulations, Kagan joined Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s majority opinion, while Sotomayor and Jackson each dissented separately. Jackson lamented in hers that the environmental case “gives fodder to the unfortunate perception that moneyed interests enjoy an easier road to relief in this Court than ordinary citizens.”
Again, the intra-Democratic split didn’t start this week. We’ve seen it throughout the term, like when the court sided with the Trump administration on legal protections for more than 500,000 immigrants in May, while only Jackson and Sotomayor dissented. Those two justices were likewise the only dissenters from the court’s recent rejection of an appeal claiming racial discrimination.
So, we have Kagan sometimes joining the Republican appointees while Sotomayor and Jackson go the other way and sometimes each goes their own way within that departure.
What does it mean? There are different ways to look at it — many more than can fit in this brief reflection. And we should be careful not to draw any extreme conclusions, because Kagan isn’t shy about taking the majority to task when she thinks it’s warranted. But one way to look at it is simply that Kagan is the most moderate of the three Democratic appointees, and it’s not more complicated than that. Another way, which isn’t mutually exclusive from the first, is that Kagan seeks to build goodwill with the entrenched Republican-appointed supermajority — though, if true, it’s unclear what she has won, or will win.
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