At SCOTUS

In early June, the Government launched “Operation At Large” in Los Angeles, deploying roving patrols of armed and masked immigration agents to local car washes, Home Depots, tow yards, bus stops, farms, recycling centers, churches, and parks. Over the course of the next month, the Government made nearly 2,800 immigration-related arrests and detained many more.

Justice Sotomayor, for the liberals, then explains how racial profiling was used. She also summarizes the lawsuit. The district court, as usual in these cases, writing an extensive opinion, held for the challengers. 

The judge is a well-experienced child of Ghanaian immigrants. The Ninth Circuit upheld the opinion. The Supreme Court stayed the opinion without saying why. Kavanaugh, in a dubious mansplaining way, alone has an opinion. The dissent is double the length. 

Law Dork has more. A reasonable (at some point, that is a sarcastic term), conservative-leaning professor defends the decision. I am not that keen on his take and tone, but hey, what am I to do to challenge a Fourth Amendment expert? 

It has a comment from "anon" that in part compares abusive practices by normal police and ICE agents:

There are disincentives to cops doing this. They can get sued, or evidence can get suppressed, and the case thrown out. Employers of cops also have incentives to train cops to make sure they don't run roughshod over the Fourth Amendment, since they can also be subject to liability (either directly or through indemnification), and since they would also rather not have evidence suppressed in criminal cases. Some of those employers also buy insurance for these sorts of situations, and those insurers are doubtless also keen to make sure that officers know the law.

Those disincentives don't apply to the ICE agents who participate in these roundups. Civil remedies against federal agents for violating Fourth Amendment rights are very weak. And these raids are not about detecting and punishing crime.

Another professor provides another take on a key standing point. Lots of legal minds found the decision quite appalling. There is also a hypocritical tint.

Meanwhile, Chief Justice Roberts handed down an administrative stay that seems to, in effect, overturn a 1930s Supreme Court opinion that protects many agency personnel from at-will presidential removal.

This might just be a temporary thing, since an administrative stay is temporary. Many are not that optimistic. We shall see.  

This all makes me feel fine. That is, f-ed insecure neurotic and emotional. 

Don't worry. Barrett, doing her book tour now, thinks there is no constitutional crisis. 

As Sotomayor noted, dropping the "respectfully," I dissent. "I dissent" should be the normal thing. 

==

Okay. That was yesterday. I was going to leave it there, but there was more action today. 

John Roberts issues another "administrative stay," this time blocking Judge Ali's preliminary injunction in the foreign aid funding case while the Supreme Court considers DOJ's request (which was denied by the DC Circuit). [h/t Chris Geinder]

They will also decide the "Trump tariffs" issue. They are speeding along. No slow walking like in the Trump immunity case. Why? It surely is not because there it helped Trump that things went slowly. 

The new term starts on the First Monday in October.