Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor Issues Blistering Dissent To Presidential Immunity Ruling: ‘The President Is Now A King’

On Monday, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a blistering dissent after the court’s conservative majority granted former president Donald Trump full immunity for “official acts” he took while in office.

In a 6-3 decision split along partisan lines, the court ruled that Trump has immunity for certain actions taken during his presidency, but not unofficial acts related to his federal election interference case. This decision further complicates and delays Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s efforts to prosecute Trump for allegedly conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results.

The court did not define the criteria for what qualifies as an “official” act, leaving this determination to be decided by lower courts. “The president is now a king,” she wrote.

In a scathing dissent aimed at her conservative colleagues – Justice Amy Coney Barett, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts – three of whom were appointed by Trump, Sotomayor criticized the ruling for creating “an atexual, ahistorical and unjustifiable immunity that puts the President above the law.”

“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution,” Sotomayor wrote.

“Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune,” she added.

Sotomayor further criticized the conservative majority for having a “single-minded fixation” on the presidential need “for boldness and dispatch” that ignores the “countervailing need for accountability and restraint.”

The liberal justice argued that immunity created by the ruling now “lies about like a loaded weapon for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, over the interests of the Nation.”

Supported by fellow liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, Sotomayor argued that due to the ruling, Trump now has “all the immunity he asked for and more,” even though the Constitution does not shield a former president from accountability for “criminal and treasonous acts.”

“Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law,” she wrote.

“Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for political gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop,” wrote Sotomayor. “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

Justice Jackson issued a separate dissent, aligning with Sotomayor in omitting the customary “respectfully” before expressing her dissenting opinion.

In response to his liberal colleagues, Roberts, author of the majority opinion, countered that the dissents “strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today,” which primarily determines “that immunity extends to official discussions between the President and his Attorney General, and then remand to the lower courts to determine ‘in the first instance’ whether and to what extend Trump’s remaining alleged conduct is entitled to immunity.”