Ketanji Brown Jackson Throws a Fit As Supreme Court Backs SAVE Voter Verification

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may use the SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) database for voter-verification purposes. Pursuant to an executive order issued by President Trump last March, about half of the nation’s 50 states have been accessing the database to assure that their voter rolls contain only American citizens living within their jurisdictions. In June, however, Biden-appointed District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan ruled that it was unconstitutional for the DHS to share the database with states. Friday’s SCOTUS ruling granted the Trump DOJ’s request for a stay. And Justice  Jackson was not pleased.

She responded with a 12-page dissent that accused the Court’s majority of misreading both Supreme Court precedent and U.S. statutes by allowing the DHS and the White House to unilaterally expand the executive branch’s authority. Jackson’s dissent was full of cheap shots at the majority and infantile analogies such as the following: “[I]n balancing the equities, the majority only looks at one side of the scale — the judicial equivalent of expecting a seesaw with weight applied on only one side to work properly.” This was meant to refute the majority’s opinion that the judge’s ruling “inhibits the Federal Government’s efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections.”

Appointed by former President Biden in 2022, Justice Jackson is the Supreme Court’s youngest and least experienced member. Evidently, it has never occurred to her that this calls for a certain amount of humility. Instead, she has emerged as one of the most vocal critics of its practices and her more seasoned colleagues — in written opinions as well as public speeches. Indeed, the night before the Court’s latest ruling was released, she spoke at the University of the District of Columbia’s law school where she sharply criticized the manner in which the Court manages its emergency docket. She had the audacity to advise her fellow justices to use the emergency docket less often. The New York Times reports that she added the following remarks:

“If we’re not careful, the emergency docket can and will become an end run around the standard review process, a special avenue that certain privileged litigants can use selectively,” Justice Jackson said. “Why is it that one party should get a fast pass to the Supreme Court of the United States when so many other parties are queued up, waiting patiently for the court’s attention?”