Great news for lovers of racism and hypocrisy!
The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to get back to grabbing random Latino people in Home Depot parking lots in Los Angeles, effectively allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to racially profile people and ask them for their papers. I can't think of a single time in history when that has ended poorly.
The Sept. 8 ruling suggests that any inconvenience a U.S. citizen who happens to be Latino might experience when accosted by federal agents while attempting to buy a weed whacker is no biggie. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that "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."
You see? No problem. Unless you're one of the many U.S. citizens who've been swept up by masked ICE agents and hauled off to a detention center. Or unless you're a U.S. citizen who doesn't think the government should be allowed to ask you to show your damn papers.
If you're Latino, your race matters if you're in a Home Depot parking lot
Put another way, I'd like to hear from all the White people who would be fine with an ICE agent stopping them in a Home Depot parking lot on a Saturday afternoon and demanding to see identification. I'll just sit here holding my breath.
It's notable that the conservative justices who just told ICE agents they're going to use race as a factor in their decision to indiscriminately stop people are the same justices who told Harvard University that using race as one factor in admissions decisions is forbidden.
Kavanaugh and other conservative justices show their true hypocrisy
Kavanaugh was one of the justices who effectively struck down affirmative action in higher education, boldly noting in his concurrence that "racial discrimination still occurs and the effects of past racial discrimination still persist. Federal and state civil rights laws serve to deter and provide remedies for current acts of racial discrimination."
Boy, that Kavanaugh back when the 2023 affirmative action ruling came down should get a load of the 2025 version of Kavanaugh, because today's version is singing a different tune.
Supreme Court again shows that the Constitution is optional
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent on the Sept. 8 ICE ruling, "The Fourth Amendment thus prohibits exactly what the Government is attempting to do here: seize individuals based solely on a set of facts that 'describe[s] a very large category of presumably innocent' people."
Something tells me the things 2023 Kavanaugh claimed would "provide remedies for current acts of racial discrimination" don't apply to Latino people walking through a home-improvement store's parking lot in 2025.
Race matters in America only when the Supreme Court says it does
When the affirmative-action ruling came down, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that universities were guilty of concluding "that the touchstone of an individual's identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice."
Oops! Now it does.
If you're a non-White person trying to get into Home Depot, your race is allowed to matter. If you're a non-White person trying to get into Harvard, this Supreme Court's version of America is colorblind.
It seems hypocrisy and not-so-veiled racism have become the law of the land.