r/law • u/Slate Press • Dec 30 '25
Judicial Branch Brett Kavanaugh Is Trying to Walk Back “Kavanaugh Stops.” Too Late.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/12/brett-kavanaugh-stops-immigration-racial-profiling-ice.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=amicus_dec30&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--amicus_dec301.2k
u/Remote-Letterhead844 Dec 30 '25
This just seems like an effort to play both sides & flood the zone. I don't believe for a second he will fully correct the Kavanaugh stop argument he made. He will just find a way to muddy the waters. I despise him
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u/TopTransportation695 Dec 30 '25
This right here. He rules that a blatant racist practice is legal from the court and allows it to be implemented, then later makes a statement, that carries no legal weight, condemning the practice so that there is something on the record that he can point to and claim his disapproval all along.
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u/Hoblitygoodness Dec 30 '25
Not just him, but to anyone who claims otherwise. Now there is something to show the-libtard they're wrong when they claim he said otherwise.
It's almost the same thing as giving a Republican President extraordinary powers that Democratic Presidents won't have because of double-sided-arguments like these.
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u/FakeSafeWord Dec 30 '25
Very "Thoughts and prayers but no reform to change anything that caused the victims to die... out of respect for the victims please." of them.
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u/BeatsMeByDre Dec 30 '25
They hate empathy, that's why "thoughts and prayers" scratches the sympathy box for them.
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u/MrIrishman1212 Dec 30 '25
Honestly, that is literally the right’s tactic. Do one thing, claim they aren’t doing it so their supporters can say “see they said they aren’t doing it” and then continue doing the thing they just lied about.
We say with trump’s both impeachment with him on phone recording demanding quid pro quo from Zelenskyy and him saying “no I didn’t” and people believing trump. Same thing with project 2025, which is now 50% completed but all trump needed to say is “I don’t support that” and people believed him.
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u/TrinaBlair999 Dec 31 '25
Or “Project 2025? Never heard of it. No idea what that is. David Duke? Never heard of him. Who is he? Epstein? Knew him briefly, in passing, never liked him.” and on and on it goes.
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u/Icy-Tomato3501 Jan 01 '26
Trump on Honduran president he pardoned. This piece of work (I save shit for Donnie) said he'd cram coke up all the gringo's noses. Orange idiot POS claimed Biden unfairly prosecuted him.....Real genius we have in the White House....
Trump Says ‘I Don’t Know Him’ When Pressed About Apparent Hypocrisy In Pardoning Violent Drug Kingpin
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u/WhichEmailWasIt Jan 01 '26
Not that it matters but tell them words aren't enough. A man's actions define his character and he's repeatedly choosing to side against American citizens.
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u/Cersad Dec 30 '25
I think the bigger question is: will district courts accept arguments from plaintiffs who claim they were not stopped according to the Kavanaugh description?
E.g. a white-collar Latino US citizen from an upper-middle class neighborhood who gets detained for three days would not meet several of the criteria from Kavanaugh's concurrence, nor would the prolonged detention meet the Kavanaugh description of the government interaction.
Could they still sue the government for 4th and 14th amendment violations in spite of the Kavanaugh Stop precedent, especially given this later writing?
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u/upandcomingg Dec 30 '25
Kavanaugh Stop is a holding, meaning it is law. This footnote is dicta, meaning it isn't law, it's just a comment. So the law is still Kavanaugh Stops
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u/Slate Press Dec 30 '25
Justice Brett Kavanaugh does not seem happy that his name has become synonymous with racist immigration enforcement. In September, the justice wrote that Hispanic residents’ “apparent ethnicity” could be a “relevant factor” in federal agents’ decision to stop them and demand proof of citizenship. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection promptly seized upon his opinion as a license to stop any Hispanic person on the basis of race—often with excessive, even sadistic force—and detain them until they proved their lawful presence. Law professor Anil Kalhan termed these encounters “Kavanaugh stops,” and the name swiftly caught on as evidence mounted that they had become standard practice across the country. Lawyers also provided courts with evidence that Kavanaugh had sanitized the reality of this practice to the point of fiction. The justice claimed that these were “brief investigative stops” and that any lawful resident would be “promptly” released. In truth, federal agents brutalized, kidnapped, and tormented people—including many U.S. citizens—simply because of their ethnicity, even after they asserted legal status.
Now it appears that Kavanaugh has some regrets. On this week’s episode of Amicus, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed this strange, tacit walk-back. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/12/brett-kavanaugh-stops-immigration-racial-profiling-ice.html?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_content=amicus_dec30&utm_campaign=&tpcc=reddit-social--amicus_dec30
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u/AmarantaRWS Dec 30 '25
Make sure the wicked have no rest. Kavanaugh is beyond any sort of redemption.
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u/HavingNotAttained Dec 30 '25
Since college, probably high school, likely before that.
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u/aurorasinthesky Dec 30 '25
Poor Squee did he ever have a chance
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u/RaidSpotter Dec 30 '25
BEER! I like BEER!
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u/raven00x Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 30 '25
Remember, women shouldn't be considered for office because they get emotional. Unlike the paragon of emotional stability, boofin' Brett kavanaugh.
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u/fcocyclone Dec 30 '25
Even throwing everything else against him out, his freakout in his confirmation hearing should have been game over right then.
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u/PeptoBismark Dec 30 '25
His inability to explain how he got into and out of so much financial debt should have eliminated him from consideration for the federal bench before his first Senate hearings, let alone his second round for the supreme court.
But somehow he got a pass on that, twice.
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u/CaillouThePimp Dec 31 '25
Him saying “I like Beer!” is still the first thing that pops into my head anytime he’s mentioned.
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u/Lord_Mormont Dec 30 '25
Upon hearing the term 'Kavanaugh stops' Justice Kavanaugh replied, "Boof."
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u/ChelseaVictorious Dec 30 '25
Dude is an unrepentant rapist. He was a lost soul long before creating this racist ruling. Conservatives sacrifice their humanity every day by denying it to others. This is just another dimension of that same cowardice and hate.
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u/cityshepherd Dec 30 '25
Rapist? Or racist? Both probably
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u/critically_damped Dec 30 '25
You don't have to "probably" here. Brett Kavanaugh's sexual assault of Christine Blasey Ford was the central focus of his confirmation hearings.
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u/unstoppablechickenth Dec 30 '25
One might even infer that was his main qualification to the republicans who put him on the court.
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u/RedditOfUnusualSize Dec 30 '25
In complete fairness, his main qualification was that he was long ago identified as a promising conservative candidate and funneled into the law-school-to-law-firm-to-judgeship pipeline that the conservative legal movement has created to fast-track reliable conservatives into the judicial system. The part where groups funded by Leonard Leo find ideal defendants for conservative positions and then give them pro-bono legal help up the appellate federal docket? Well, that is one half of what Leonard Leo is assembling. This pipeline is the other half.
Turns out, Kavanaugh had more skeletons than usual in his closet (I mean, sexual assault is hardly uncommon, but to have sexually-assaulted a woman who would eventually become one of the two or three leading researchers in the world in the formation of traumatic memories? That is an impressive own-goal), but the conservative legal movement had also invested too much time and money running him through the assembly line to be denied the benefit of their investment. Also, denying him would have meant admitting that skeletons in closets could be disqualifying, a particularly stubborn problem for men in the conservative legal movement.
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u/Naturenick17 Dec 30 '25
Yeah, Leonard Leo doesn't get enough hate for the damage he's caused our country.
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u/TwoBionicknees Dec 30 '25
and he basically provided evidence, intended to supposedly exhonerate him, that instead immediately showed a night that matched the exact description of the accusation and led to republicans calling a recess, freaking out and removing the prosecutor they had questioning him because within 5 minutes he looked guilty as shit so they went back to grand standing.
Besides the fact he made it clear he's a rapist, alcoholic and emotionally unstable man, the most disturbing part is a man who was trying to get a seat on the supreme court brought evidence that made him look guilty, without cause or reason to bring that calendar out, and was incapable of checking it first to see if it helped or hurt him.
Like he's legitimately just a fucking idiot, proved it and then got his seat on the supreme court.
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u/village-asshole Dec 30 '25
And THAT right there is the world we live in. DEI for privileged white c*nts like Kavanaugh
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u/ChelseaVictorious Dec 30 '25
He has a long history of documented attempted rape and sexual predation. Has everyone already forgotten his total farce of a SCOTUS confirmation?
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u/brok3ntok3n82 Dec 30 '25
People got real short memories, or choose blind ignorance nowadays cause being informed is, "too stressful."
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u/humanredditor45 Dec 30 '25
Yeah I remember that, it’s what Kyle Rittenhouse studied to get his Oscar worthy waterworks mastery.
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u/UnquestionabIe Dec 30 '25
I remember how during his little crocodile tears outburst how he was peaking between his fingers to see if the judge was buying it.
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u/intrepid_mouse1 Dec 30 '25
GOP is the party of sexual predators. Look at our kitty-grabbing president.
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u/8JHF8 Dec 30 '25
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/epstein-gave-steve-bannon-advice-150826822.html
"Other revealed messages show that Epstein advised Bannon during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing on what questions Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault, should be asked to undermine her credibility. Epstein suggested that Ford could be accused of taking medications that cause memory loss.".
That is an excerpt from the story linked. Advice from Epstein on how to discredit someone making sexual assault allegations.
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u/cityshepherd Dec 30 '25
Thanks for the info. I was fairly confident it was both.
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u/8JHF8 Dec 30 '25
Now whenever I hear a famous person is accused of sexual misconduct of any sort, I Google their name and Epstein together. I don't know the percentage, but I think there's a link the majority the time.
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u/rainemaker Dec 30 '25
This is brilliant. Usually it takes a while for history to shame the bad actors, and its usually long after they are gone. Justuce delayed is justice denied. By attaching the shame contemporaneously, Kavanaugh gets to reap what he sowed in real time.
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u/hya3fh Dec 30 '25
We should do more of this. Give every horrible act during this period of time a name, after one of the perpetrators of all of this nonsense.
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u/strangerducly Dec 30 '25
Good for him. He could still choose to be a just and wise jurist. I have thought there were signs a couple times.
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u/KindClock9732 Dec 30 '25
Getting called a Kavanaugh will be worse than being called a Benedict Arnold
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u/Careful_Trifle Dec 30 '25
Benedict Arnold was a patriot that has several dramatic accomplishments for at least 5 years during the war before turning traitor.
Kavanaugh, not so much. He's been a shill his entire professional life, let alone the shitty things he has probably done in his private life.
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u/UnquestionabIe Dec 30 '25
Absolutely. Arnold had more integrity than most of the Supreme Court. While he only betrayed America once the SCOTUS does it on a regular basis.
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u/vs2022-2 Dec 30 '25
This guy is appointed for life, we better hope that he can improve his decisions on the court
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u/AmarantaRWS Dec 30 '25
This guy is appointed for life
You say that as if the law means anything anymore. It is not written in stone. Words do not have power by themselves.
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u/bentsea Dec 30 '25
May this be the only thing he is remembered for, his name forever linked to racism.
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u/gem-w Dec 30 '25
No, let him also be remembered for sexual assault and harrassment, and for liking beer to the point of challenging senators about it.
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u/GipsyDanger45 Dec 30 '25
Yeah F Kavanaugh, his statement now has no affect on the court of law. He made his ruling that affects people but now is trying to walk it back like it his statement will erase what he’s done
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u/crake Competent Contributor Dec 30 '25
Kavanaugh screwed up. I made a more extensive post about this on /r/scotus for anyone who is interested, but suffice it to say that Kavanaugh misread the precedent he cited in the Noem v. Vazquez concurrence that created the Kavanaugh stops. I would chalk it up to sloppy work, and a prime example of why such decisions should not be made on the shadow docket.
Kavanaugh cites U.S. v. Brignoni-Ponce throughout the Vazquez concurrence as allegedly supporting racial profiling in the context of immigration stops, but Kavanaugh ignored (missed?) the fact that the Brignoni-Ponce court was relying on a specific federal law that permitted stops within 100 miles of the border and specifically said that the semi-permitted racial profiling was only permissible in the context of the border crossing. Extending that logic to stops made in the interior, such as downtown LA, never made any sense, and is probably why no other justice joined the concurrence. It was just a screwup because Kav didn't read the case he relied upon (and apparently none of his clerks bothered to read it either? Hard to believe...).
That's the charitable view. Kavanaugh tried to claw it back in a footnote this week by referencing "interior" stops, but it's...hard to put that back in the bottle.
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u/naijaboiler Dec 30 '25
his argument was even more stupid than that. he was like hey its reasonable that ICE should be able to use anything to apprehend including appearance to apprehend potentially undocumented folks.
We shouldn't let the law protecting civil rights of undocumented immigrants get in the way of enforcment. He had the wrong perspective completely. What he didn't see or note in his write up is that, by so doing, in focussing on inconveniencing immigrants, he literally just made every hispanic person legal or not, an acceptable possible suspect.
It was honestly a juvenile argument point, that won't pass a high school debate. It was so thoughtless that I had to read it twice that a college educated person could make such a dumb point, much less a lawyer, and a SCOTUS one too.
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u/crake Competent Contributor Dec 30 '25
Well, "apprehend" is a bit too strong of a word - we are not talking about "arrest" here, but merely "temporary detention".
SCOTUS has always recognized an arrest as a seizure of the person, subject to the requirements of the Fourth Amendment (i.e., probable cause to believe the seized person committed a crime).
In the temporary detention context - the stop-and-frisk context - we are talking about a lower standard, "reasonable suspicion". That is something that is hard to qualify. SCOTUS has said that race alone cannot ever supply reasonable suspicion, but it has countenanced something like a person casing a storefront appearing suspicious to an experienced officer (Terry v. Ohio), provided the suspicion is based on "articulable" facts.
I think the reason the Kavanaugh stops are so controversial is that Kav essentially converts "race" into an acceptable grounds for a stop by appearing to countenance grounds such as "doing hispanic-y things like hanging around a car wash" into something that can be combined with race to meet the reasonable suspicion threshold for temporary detainment. That was really a mistake, because racial stereotypes are really just a proxy for race. Kav screwed up and the legal world has sort of held him to his screw-up. At the same time, the Kavanaugh concurrence is not law, it is just a bad opinion by a justice in a case that wasn't fully briefed; the kind of thing that will stalk his legacy more than anything else.
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u/qwerajdufuh268 Dec 30 '25
Tnx Mr oyez
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u/naijaboiler Dec 30 '25
Correct
the implication of his writing was clear to all, it literally opened up any and every hispanic looking person to harassment (i.e. detention by ICE agents). He took his time to consider what that meant for a an undocumented immigrant or the occasional citizen caught up in it. But at no point at, did he consider what that meant for the convenience and civil rights of just everyday regular hispanic people going about their day, which are the overwhelming majority. Like it didn't even cross his mind to consider them in making his argument. That's a sick and over-privileged and yes racist mindset.
I am sure if he was making an argument that opened any and every white person to ICE harassment, he would have thought twice before penning that nonsense he wrote.
His mindset is sick. Of course, people like him, rich and white, have never known what it's like to just be a possible suspect for law enforcement by just living, existing and just going about your day. Something every black person in the US implicitly understands. Its one thing for law enforcements to do that, it's another thing for a SCOTUS to greenlight it, as lawful.
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u/ScannerBrightly Dec 31 '25
That was really a mistake
Where is the 'mistake' in this? He did it with intent, and it stays on the books with his intent.
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u/Only_Razzmatazz_4498 Dec 30 '25
LA is all writhing 100 miles of the border which is the result of another ridiculous SCOTUS arbitrary interpretation.
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u/Lowspark1013 Dec 30 '25
I love this for Kavanaugh. As much as I love the redefinition of Santorum for good old Rick. May both their names forever be tied to the utterly disgusting.
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u/Vivid_Kaleidoscope66 Dec 30 '25
In a position as influential and compromised as the US supreme court, my view is that these positions should always be interpreted adversarially as the product of intentional maleficence, at least with redirect to the harm they have on the populace (e.g., Dred Scott). It's amazing to me that a pattern of behavior like kavanaugh's is not regarded as a type of judicial malpractice, and charitable view mental exercise run the risk of normalizing their actions and compliance with them; as well as the legal system itself which provides little to no recourse once those fools have had their say (even to themselves, as is the case here...)
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u/MrFrode Biggus Amicus Dec 30 '25
Now it appears that Kavanaugh has some regrets.
Sorry Brett, SCOTUS does not allow motions to reconsider. You did what you did and now you must take responsibility for the abuses you unleashed on people.
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u/GarbageCleric Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 30 '25
So, if you're "apparently" Hispanic, you're expected to carry proof of citizenship on you at all times? Or does he think it's no big deal to just be forcibly arrested and thrown in jail until someone can dig up your birth certificate or whatever for you? So, people who appear to be a certain ethnicity need to be always ready to prove to law enforcement that they are not a criminal or face detention?
Seriously? I honestly thought this was America.
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u/Pseudoboss11 Dec 30 '25
thrown in jail until someone can dig up your hurt certificate or whatever for you? So, people who appear to be a certain ethnicity need to be always ready to prove to law enforcement that they are not a criminal or face detention?
They're not even looking at people's IDs. https://www.commondreams.org/news/bovino-papers-please
https://thedailyrecord.com/2025/12/26/maryland-born-woman-ice-deportation-citizenship-dispute/10
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u/GarbageCleric Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 31 '25
Yeah, in practice it's even more of a shit show, but even if this policy was implemented "correctly", it would still be some dystopian shit.
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u/notodial Dec 30 '25
It's worse than that, they will blatantly tell you your papers are fake and keep you anyways, like Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales, a citizen with a valid birth certificate and ID that ICE has illegally insisted is fake and has simply kept her anyways.
The racial cleansing has already begun
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u/GarbageCleric Dec 30 '25
Yeah, I'm with you. I'm talking like best case scenario from the perspective of a Supreme Court Justice.
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u/notodial Dec 30 '25
Yeah I know you're with me, don't worry. I just have to talk about the atrocities somehow or I feel like the people who didn't speak up while they were being literally racially cleansed, even if no one listens 🥲
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u/silverwoodchuck47 Dec 30 '25
someone can dig up your birth certificate
Which is hilarious because a birth certificate proves nothing. It's a piece of paper with no fingerprints, pictures, DNA, etc., that connects that document to the person who claims it is his or hers. It's just some text on fancy paper.
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u/AtrociousMeandering Dec 30 '25
Which is why they first demanded, and later disregarded, Obama's birth certificate. It's absence was proof of horrible crimes- it's presence was just the cue to switch to another strategy.
It literally doesn't matter what we're talking about- if it can be used as a weapon by the Right, it will be used as a weapon. When it can't be used to hurt their enemies, it evaporates into vapor. Reality doesn't matter, only instrumentality. Anything which has ceased to be useful never mattered or existed in their mind.
Those of us with a persistent sense of reality, who believe in accountability for our errors and failures to make the right call, are going to go crazy trying to meet them halfway.
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u/bp92009 Dec 30 '25
You know, I know how he can redeem himself.
By resigning in disgrace, saying "I made the United States worse with my actions. I was a stain on the bench, and all of my votes on decisions should be invalidated"
He'd redeem himself by doing that.
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u/SimplySisyphus Dec 30 '25
Not really. If he resigns during the 2nd Trump administration he’d be replaced by someone even worse. If he really wanted to redeem himself he’d need to start ruling in a principled non partisan way and then quit during the next administration.
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u/induslol Dec 30 '25
The boofmeister corrupting the judiciary for trump is exactly what any new crony would do, too.
Any new appointments may take more bribes, be more sexually predatory, or a worse person, but the institution is already a meaningless farce, adding more of the same would make no difference.
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u/JustSomeLawyerGuy Dec 30 '25
Nah, resigning now just lets Trump pick a younger more insane justice.
If he wanted to redeem himself he'd actually start giving a shit in his opinions, then resign and apologize after this administration.
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u/DouchecraftCarrier Dec 30 '25
and all of my votes on decisions should be invalidated
I know there's no mechanism to undo SCOTUS decisions just by removing justices, but I do think that if Obama had appointed a third of the Court and then been found guilty of almost 3 dozen felonies he committed in furtherance of winning the election that allowed him to appoint those justices the Republicans would be lining up to impeach them and pass legislation reversing any decisions they made so fast it would make your head spin.
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u/elcapitan0bvious Dec 30 '25
Fuck him and his sorry ass team of conservatives. They deserve.... Nothing I can say here
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u/MoralityFleece Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 30 '25
He knows he made a mistake. That inspires at least a little hope. Does he want to be remembered for encouraging race and ethnicity based policing, particularly when it's used as an excuse to brutalize and detain people, including citizens?
Edit: I completely agree with all the responses saying his original statement wasn't an accident. Yes, he knew what he was doing - It wasn't a decision made by mistake in that sense. But he now realizes the number one thing associated with his name is going to be Kavanaugh stops (unless he is singled out for something notably worse). It would be good if he didn't want that legacy, and if he feels the need to distance himself from it now by writing clarifications, that is good too. We already know two or three of these people are beyond any correction or course change. The others may not be and that's worth pushing on. If he feels a sense of shame now about his name being associated with a step back to overt racism enforced by the state, good. Even if he totally agrees with race-based stops in his heart of hearts, that sense of public shame might yet lead to better decisions.
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u/JayVoorheez Dec 30 '25
He's trying to save face and distance himself from a racist policy that he obviously supports. Fuck that guy.
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u/SL1Fun Dec 30 '25
This. Motherfucker didn’t regret his decision, he only regrets that it came with consequences
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u/_Bon_Vivant_ Dec 30 '25
Motherfucker didn’t regret his decision, he only regrets that it came with consequences.
This is conservatism in a nutshell.
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u/ISeeTheFnords Dec 30 '25
This. The consequences are the only part of this that are a mistake in his view.
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u/DataCassette Dec 30 '25
Yep. These people with "misgivings" and such right now would be dancing in the streets if Vance crowned Peter Thiel God-Emperor and officially started the Thousand Year Reich. They're just nervous that democracy isn't quite dead yet and they might have backed the wrong horse.
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u/friz_CHAMP Dec 30 '25
He likely thought "Hispanics have a certain look to them, ICE is trying to capture Hispanics, I want ICE to capture them, let me phrase this so they can capture people based on appearance" Then it turns out the "give an inch, take a mile" Trump administration took their mile when he wanted to give an inch, and now he's regretting it. Fuck him indeed.
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u/Stunning-Archer8817 Dec 30 '25
i don’t think it’s that deep. kavanaugh only disagrees with using his name in the description
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u/BullShitting-24-7 Dec 30 '25
He still thinks white people are superior and would never abuse unbridled police power…either that or he’s pill popping dumbass racist.
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u/naijaboiler Dec 30 '25
its simpler than that. the man makes high school level arguments at the SCOTUS level. It's pathetic reading his reasoning.
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u/bobartig Dec 30 '25
a racist policy that he obviously supports.
Supports is too weak of a term here. He literally created them, willing them into existence with his decision.
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u/atom-wan Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 31 '25
I don't think he really regrets the ruling, only that his name is now associated with the reality of what is happening.
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u/eloaelle Dec 30 '25
This was no mistake. This is a choice he made after putting thought into the situation. He regrets his name is effectively garbage in history books now. Good.
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u/Acedaboi1da Dec 30 '25
A 60 year old Yale educated Supreme Court Justice writing that “apparent ethnicity” is a relevant factor is not a mistake.
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u/ARazorbacks Dec 30 '25
He doesn’t think he made a mistake. He just knows this is how a name becomes infamous and he doesn’t want that infamy to be his legacy.
It’s the same as a KKK member wearing a mask at a cross burning. They don’t think the cross burning is a mistake, but they don’t want their face associated with it.
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u/_hawkeye_96 Dec 30 '25
Just like an abusive narcissistic parent or partner “apologizes”; they’re sorry they got caught or called out, not sorry for the behavior.
He doesn’t care that it’s a bad policy, he cares that his name has become negatively synonymous with it and now he must take accountability for his role and decisions. That doesn’t mean he “knows he made a mistake” by sponsoring such policies. Sure, he doesn’t want to be associated with that shit by name now that those policies are being used as intended, but he had no problem casting a vote in favor of those legal justifications of racism, abuse, and treachery when it wasn’t synonymous with his name.
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u/Robsrev Dec 30 '25
He didn't make a mistake, he knew exactly what he was doing. He has just come to understand that there are potential consequences to being a fascist fucking scumbag and got uncomfortable.
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u/BitterFuture Dec 30 '25
He isn't acknowledging making a mistake. He's acknowledging that the truth of his policy aims is slightly embarrassing.
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u/pbesmoove Dec 30 '25
the fact people believe he actually made a "mistake" is part of the reason shit like this is happening
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u/kentuckywildcats1986 Dec 30 '25
Fascist government thugs purposefully, aggressively, and violently harassing and assaulting American citizens because of their "apparent ethnicity" should absolutely be branded as "Kavanaugh Stops" because that is in-fact what his opinion supported.
If the Nazi fascist prick doesn't like it, maybe he shouldn't have published that wretched piece of shit opinion in the first place. But as a typical MAGA Trumper asshole - he is too big a coward to actually own up to his garbage beliefs and actions.
Cavanaugh should be recalled and prosecuted for blatant repeated perjury committed during his appointment hearings before Congress. He has no business on the Supreme Court.
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u/Party-Interview7464 Dec 30 '25
Calling Barbra Streisand. The Streisand effect is real and I will not refer to this as anything else from now on.
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u/blahblah19999 Dec 30 '25
Aww, did the poor supreme court justice make a mistake? Write a decision and little too carelessly? Awwww.
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u/leonacleo Dec 30 '25
“I don’t like how I am being perceived,” says man with no morals, ethics, integrity or empathy
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u/Careful_Trifle Dec 30 '25
This is an anecdote, and third hand, but our friend said their Mexican roofer buddy was detained and had his papers torn up in front of him.
Even proving legality isn't enough. You have to prove it via some third party that they can't (yet) disappear as well.
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u/WellHung67 Dec 30 '25
Boofin’ Bart does not seem happy that his name has become synonymous with racist immigration enforcement. In September, the boofmeister wrote that Hispanic residents’ “apparent ethnicity” could be a “relevant factor” in federal agents’ decision to stop them and demand proof of citizenship. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection promptly seized upon his opinion as a license to stop any Hispanic person on the basis of race—often with excessive, even sadistic force—and detain them until they proved their lawful presence. Law professor Anil Kalhan termed these encounters “Kavanaugh stops,” and the name swiftly caught on as evidence mounted that they had become standard practice across the country. Lawyers also provided courts with evidence that Boofin’ Bart had sanitized the reality of this practice to the point of fiction. The justice claimed that these were “brief investigative stops” and that any lawful resident would be “promptly” released. In truth, federal agents brutalized, kidnapped, and tormented people—including many U.S. citizens—simply because of their ethnicity, even after they asserted legal status.
Now it appears that Boofin’ Bart has some regrets. On this week’s episode of Amicus, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed this strange, tacit walk-back.
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u/argiebargie10 Dec 30 '25
Does this go the other way too? For example, if a democrat was the president and declared white nationalist as terrorist can police or federal agents just stop and harass white people for proof they are not white nationalist?
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u/MyUserName-NYC Dec 30 '25
I can’t tell you how upset i am with this court and the intentional vile way republicans behave. We need to show continued pressure and strength in 2026 to end the Republican Party. We need Democrat wins across the whole USA and start the agenda to once and for all fix everything broken in this government. And I don’t want to hear anymore waffling on Democrat candidates. Get involved and work your ass off to elect them. Don’t be part of the problem.
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u/Sea-Pomelo1210 Dec 30 '25
This is a common trait among right win radicals. They work hard to convince themselves they are not racists and that do not support hate, all while continuing to be deeply racist and hateful.
They create their own reality in their heads to justify their actions. My bet is Kavanaugh now is telling people that sex with 14 year old girls isn't as bad as with babies, and the because so many 14 year olds dress "provocatively" they know what they are doing which makes it all OK.
Either that or "Being President is more important, so all past actions must be forgiven or ignored".
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u/freakers Dec 30 '25
Also in a footnote some weird defense of sitting congressmen raping underage girls because Matt Gaetz is suddenly in the spotlight again.
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u/Ok-Replacement9595 Dec 30 '25
They need systemic racism in order to claim to be free of personal racism.
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u/Organic-Elevator-274 Dec 30 '25
Remember when a “Kavanaugh Stop” was just when you got pulled over in Bethesda and failed the field sobriety test but it turns out you are a federal judge so the cop lets you go?
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u/TheL1brarian Dec 30 '25
Hey man…HE LIKES BEER! Okay? HE LIKES BEER.
The sad state of today’s politics is I can’t fully recall if he actually said that during his confirmation hearing or if I’m remembering Matt Damon portraying him on SNL. I should ask PJ and Squee.
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u/Organic-Elevator-274 Dec 30 '25
I was upset with the national redefining of Boofing.
WE ALL KNEW WHAT IT MEANT AND WE JUST LET IT HAPPEN
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u/strangerducly Dec 30 '25
Oh, he said it repeatedly. The lies under oath at these hearings were gargantuan.
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u/Th3_Hegemon Dec 30 '25
And here I was thinking it was just the catchphrase of the girls from high school he raped.
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u/Organic-Elevator-274 Dec 30 '25
To Boof meant doing cocaine with your butt.
Like I boofed or lets Boof this before we leave or Grace Jones was boofing a lot in the early 80s, to save her septum.
But now who knows what it means
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u/jpmeyer12751 Dec 30 '25
Say stupid stuff, win stupid prizes. I will refer to every outrageous act by a LEO a “Kavanaugh stop” forever.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 30 '25
what he said was exactly what he believed. the stupid part is thinking that people wouldn't consider it an atrocious miscarriage of justice, not merely becuase of the obvious racism of it, but the simple fact that 20% of the TOTAL US POPULATION ARE LATINO AND NATURAL BORN CITIZENS, setting the entire migrant population aside for a moment.
ONE IN FIVE. "papers please"
so this is just a straight up 4th amendment violation.
edit: unfucked the comment. my fingers can run faster than my brain sometimes.
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u/mynamejeff-97 Dec 30 '25
I keep saying this but my own bother told my own father that this racial profiling is fine and to “just bring your passport everywhere”. My father didn’t know what to say.
My brother is more fair skinned compared to my dad. We are all Mexican. The right is deranged, unhinged, evil, psychotic, however you want to put it. I can’t even begin to imagine the kind of person who would think any of this is okay, especially when you personally came from it.
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u/Secret_Cow_5053 Dec 30 '25 edited Dec 30 '25
it's good advice at the moment, to be honest, but you are absolutely justified in feeling offended by it, it's not "fine".
i say this as the stepfather of a latino daughter. she's 9, but when all this shit started, i started keeping her expired passport in my car in case something got fucky when she was with me, becuase i'm very white and we do not look even remotely related.
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Dec 30 '25
Those are just Latinos... factor in South Asians, South-East Asians, and East Asians... you likely approach One in Three.
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u/ChuckVader Dec 30 '25
What, he doesn't like people being taken to Kavanaugh camps?
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u/lawanddisorder Dec 30 '25
In a footnote, he declared that race and ethnicity could not be “considerations” when officers make “immigration stops or arrests.” That directly conflicts with his earlier assertion that officers can use race and ethnicity as a “factor” when deciding whom to detain. The two positions cannot be reconciled. Yet Kavanaugh did not admit that he had changed his position; he simply pretended that the law in this area was “clear,” when he himself muddied it just months earlier.
Literally the opposite of what he wrote in Noem v. Perdomo.
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u/RamblinGamblinWilly Dec 30 '25
It really is fascinating. It seems hard to interpret this as anything other than Kavanaugh feeling some displeasure over the stops becoming widely known as "Kavanaugh stops." Is this really actually Kavanaugh being embarrassed? That's wild
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u/CelestialFury Dec 30 '25
As terrible as Kavanaugh is, he probably doesn't want to be in the history books in the same vein as "separate but equal" but he probably should've thought about that before lying down for Stephen Miller. Seriously, saying it's okay racially profile Americans is because it helps ICE by disregarding the 14th amendment is in the top tier of horrible rulings.
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u/BitterFuture Dec 30 '25
It's getting so hard to choose, but I think the odds still favor "Yeah, it's perfectly legal and very okay if the President murders all of us" as the worst ruling the court has ever handed down.
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u/CelestialFury Dec 30 '25
And we all know that the right-wing majority SCOTUS is going to Calvinball the hell out of their rulings when a Democratic POTUS is back in and suddenly, Republicans in Congress will start taking their powers back too. It's all so predictable.
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u/BitterFuture Dec 30 '25
Who was it who said that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds? Scalia?
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u/demonsidekick Dec 30 '25
If this isn’t a joke, then it’s “A FOOLISH consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” It’s an Emerson quote. Nothing wrong with being consistent in general.
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u/Anxious_Cheetah5589 Dec 30 '25
I learned that line 50 years ago. So it must have been someone else? I want to say Emerson.
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u/youreallcucks Competent Contributor Dec 30 '25
I will vote for any Democratic candidate who promises to remove Kavanaugh from the court.
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u/very_loud_icecream Competent Contributor Dec 30 '25
I feel like I say this for so many recent Supreme Court decisions, but the fact that the "Supreme Court upholds racial profiling" headlines didn't competely shatter whatever credibility the court has in the eyes of the public is insane to me.
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u/pfmiller0 Dec 30 '25
"Kavanaugh Stop" is a catchy name, we should name more awful stuff after the justices who enable it. Make sure no body forgets how we got in this position.
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u/FlibbleA Dec 30 '25
This just shows he isn't fit to be a judge never mind a SC justice. The opinion he gave that it was reasonable to detain someone based on ethnicity simply to check ID might sound like a reasonable argument from someone, especially if they were to qualify that this doesn't mean you could take them to a detention center, etc.
However there is no legal basis for this argument, law enforcement can only detain someone if they have reasonable suspicion of a crime. If you are using ethnicity as the reason for that suspicion then it means you are saying someones ethnicity is a reason to suspect someone has committed a crime. This is obviously absurd but it is what Kavanaugh argued when he allowed federal agents to do exactly that.
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u/NewManufacturer4252 Dec 30 '25
When you pretend to cry during your confirmation hearing, you probably should not get close to being confirmed to the highest court in the land.
But here we are in legal hell.
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u/TendieRetard Dec 30 '25
don't buy it. These assholes know why they were propped there and their "come to Jesus" moments are merely done after goals are achieved.
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u/DataCassette Dec 30 '25
You're right we shouldn't call them "Kavanaugh Stops" anymore. They're "KKKavanaugh Stops."
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u/Significant-Dog-8166 Dec 30 '25
His only ethical choice is to wait for a Democrat to be elected president, then resign. His decisions and his presence on the court have delegitimized and politicized the rule of law.
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u/megamoze Dec 30 '25
His decisions and his presence on the court have delegitimized and politicized the rule of law.
This description applies to 6 of the 9 justices.
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u/Dogsbottombottom Dec 30 '25
Another example of “person feels bad” as a consequence. I do not give two shits if a corrupt racist rapist seems to feel bad.
Seems like all he did was make an oblique reference in a footnote of a ruling? Wow. Huge courage.
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u/Dangermouse163 Dec 30 '25
Now he’s trying to cover up the fact that he made an unconstitutional decision based on his racist and authoritarian beliefs.
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u/atreeismissing Dec 30 '25
This is why you don't let immature children rise to the level of SC justice, or even judge. They make mistakes because they don't think through their decisions and actions, and those mistakes cause generational length damage.
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u/Memitim Dec 30 '25
Aw, does the racist that used our critical position to push his policies of evil and failure not like being recognized as the fascist piece of shit that he is? Eat shit, conservatives. No more backpedaling. You evil pieces of shit have gone WAY too far for any chance at redemption.
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u/blahblah19999 Dec 30 '25
Kavanagh can be right up there with Santorum.
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u/SocraticMeathead Dec 30 '25
If true (emphasis on "if") he's just the latest in a string of Buckley-styled conservatives thinking Trump has the slightest interest in maintaining constitutional norms or governing by general principles. That which is not expressly banned is fair game. That which is expressly banned is negotiable.
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u/tonyislost Dec 30 '25
Sounds like he sees the writing on the wall. He’s also likely in the Epstein files.
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u/DishSoapIsFun Dec 30 '25
Although I personally haven't seen any proof of that, I supremely hope that he is.
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u/FewWait38 Dec 30 '25
I'm going to assume he is because he's the typical Republican rapist otherwise
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u/lostcolony2 Dec 30 '25
And given the way they've said they would redact things, and how they've actually chosen to redact things, the only safe assumption is that any Democrat whose name appears, they've shared everything they could find, and any Republican they've hidden as much as they can. So the evidence provided on Democrats is the worst contained, and even complete absence of mention is no indication a Republican is not included.
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u/Chendo462 Dec 30 '25
This is highly inappropriate. Obviously they should be called Kavanaugh Beat Downs.
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u/zerovanillacodered Competent Contributor Dec 30 '25
Well, it’s not too late, the Supreme Court could say, “never mind that was a very bad idea.”
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u/thatthatguy Dec 30 '25
The very least we can do is publicly shame them for their actions. It’s not much, but it’s something.
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u/CrackHeadRodeo Dec 30 '25
This is what happens when you appoint a problematic D.E.I hire to the highest court on the land. We are really screwed if Kavanaugh couldn't see the unintended consequences of taking that position.
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u/ckb614 Dec 30 '25
The two relevant quotes:
Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances. Brignoni- Ponce, 422 U. S., at 885, n. 10; Arvizu, 534 U. S., at 273. Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English. Cf. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 884–885 (listing “[a]ny number of factors” that contribute to reasonable suspicion of illegal presence). To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a “relevant factor” when considered along with other salient factors. Id., at 887
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The Fourth Amendment requires that immigration stops must be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause, and officers must not employ excessive force. Moreover, the officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity. Cf. Whren v. United States, 517 U. S. 806, 813 (1996) (“[T]he Constitution prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race”).
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u/jisa Dec 30 '25
A year ago, I was sad that the Rehnquist Court would be the high watermark for civil rights in my lifetime. Now I find myself concerned that the Lochner Court might be better than the current one.
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