The Supreme Court on Monday overturned a federal judge’s order that had prohibited federal agents in Los Angeles from stopping people and questioning them about their immigration status based solely on factors like their ethnicity.
The ruling is not the final word in the case, which stems from the Trump administration’s attempt to carry out mass deportations. But the court’s Republican-appointed majority will allow the government to continue using aggressive — and unconstitutional, in the eyes of its critics — tactics in immigration sweeps as the litigation slowly plays out.
Here is a closer look.
What does the ruling mean?
For now, federal agents in Los Angeles carrying out the immigration crackdown can continue to decide which people to stop and at least briefly detain for questioning based solely on one or a combination of four factors that a lower-court judge had deemed unconstitutional.
Those factors are people’s apparent race or ethnicity; the fact that they speak English with an accent or speak Spanish; their presence at particular locations like farms or pickup sites for day laborers; and the type of work they do.
For the Trump administration, that means federal agents can make stops to carry out the immigration crackdown without the potential chilling effect of fearing they could be accused of violating a court order and held in contempt.
For American citizens of Hispanic descent in Los Angeles — especially people who speak with an accent or work as manual laborers — that means they will continue to risk being stopped and questioned whenever they go out. They may see it as a necessary precaution to always carry documents with them in a way that other Americans need not.
What is the case about?
Under the Fourth Amendment, government agents may not stop and detain people without reasonable suspicion that there is a legal basis to do so. A large-scale effort to round up undocumented migrants living in the Los Angeles area has raised the question of whether the Trump administration is violating that restriction.
Since June, the Trump administration has used roving patrols of armed, masked federal agents to carry out sweeps. The agents have detained people for questioning about their legal status, targeting apparent day laborers at Home Depot parking lots and workers at places like farms, carwashes and construction sites.
Civil rights organizations and several U.S. citizens who had been stopped and questioned filed a lawsuit, seeking class-action status. They accused the federal agents of engaging in “blatant racial profiling” by carrying out “indiscriminate immigration operations” with no individualized basis for suspicion.
For now, the issue is what should happen as litigation slowly plays out: Should federal agents be stopped from using such tactics in the interim, or should they be permitted to continue using them unless and until there is any final judgment?
What did lower courts say?
In July, a Federal District Court judge in Los Angeles, Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, held that it was strongly likely that the federal agents were violating the Fourth Amendment by stopping people without reasonable suspicion. She issued a temporary restraining order tying the hands of federal agents while the litigation continued.
Her order specifically barred the federal government from stopping and detaining people in the Los Angeles area based “solely” on one or a combination of four factors: ethnicity, language, location and the type of work they were performing. In August, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declined to block her order.
The Trump administration’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, sought an emergency intervention from the Supreme Court. He argued that “hanging the prospect of contempt over every investigative stop of suspected illegal aliens” would upend the government’s ability to enforce immigration law in Los Angeles.
What was the Supreme Court’s reasoning?
In allowing the Trump administration to keep doing what it wants for now, the majority as a whole did not issue a ruling explaining its decision. But one of its six members, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, filed a 10-page concurring decision. He concluded that the plaintiffs probably lacked standing, but also addressed the substance of their concerns, saying the tactics are not likely to violate the Fourth Amendment.
Weighing what was “reasonable,” Justice Kavanaugh said that agents must be allowed to rely on their experience in dealing with the problem that millions of foreign people are unlawfully living in the United States. He portrayed the harm to people who are stopped and questioned despite being lawfully in the United States, including citizens, as modest.
“As for stops of those individuals who are legally in the country, the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States,” he wrote.
What did the dissent say?
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in an opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said the ruling forced an entire class of American citizens — those who look, talk or work in ways associated with undocumented immigrants — to the indignity of having to carry documentation to prove that they deserve to walk freely.
“The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be ‘free from arbitrary interference by law officers,’” she wrote, quoting a 1975 case that said it was unconstitutional for the Border Patrol to stop a car and question its occupants when the only ground for suspicion was that they appeared to be of Mexican ancestry.
“After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little,” Justice Sotomayor continued. “Because this is unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation’s constitutional guarantees, I dissent.”
Is there a partisan pattern in the rulings?
There is.
All the jurists who concluded that upholding the Constitution probably requires ordering federal agents to be more selective and individualized in deciding whom to stop — Judge Frimpong, the three appeals court judges and the three Supreme Court justices in the dissent — are Democratic appointees.
Justice Kavanaugh and the remaining five justices who concluded that the Constitution most likely permits federal immigration agents to use blunter tactics in selecting targets for investigative stops were appointed by Republican presidents.
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
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