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SCOTUS Says ICE Can Use The Family Guy Skin Color Chart For Arrests (But Won’t Explain Why)

—Techdirt

In yet another undigned late night opinion, the Supreme Court has said that it's just fine to arrest people on the basis of the color of their skin.

The corrupt conservative justices are a blight on the law and the whole country:

You know that Family Guy meme where they have the skin color chart to determine how suspicious someone should be? Yeah, you know the one.

Well, the Supreme Court just essentially codified that into constitutional law. And they did it on the lawless shadow docket without a real explanation, because of course they did.

In a stay order issued yesterday with zero reasoning from the majority, the Supreme Court told ICE agents in Los Angeles that yes, you can absolutely detain people based on looking Latino, speaking Spanish, working certain jobs, and being in certain locations. The only “explanation” (if you can really call it that) comes from Justice Kavanaugh’s solo concurrence—which apparently was so legally dubious that not even a single one of the other conservative justices would sign on to it. But it is the only explanation given for the majority ruling.

It reverses two lower court rulings that said, quite reasonably and clearly, that you can’t just arrest people for existing while brown. But hey, why let basic constitutional principles get in the way of a good old-fashioned roundup?

This is yet another example of the Supreme Court’s increasing reliance on its shadow docket to make monumentally consequential rulings without full briefings, oral arguments, or even basic explanations. As we’ve covered extensively, the Court has been using emergency applications to essentially rewrite major areas of law while hiding behind the fiction that these are just “procedural” matters.

The pattern is always the same: government asks for emergency relief, the Court grants it with minimal (if any!) explanation, and suddenly we have new constitutional law that affects millions of people. No deliberation, no transparency, just judicial fiat—always in favor of Donald Trump’s authoritarianism—delivered with no explanation.