Alito trades barbs with Jackson, Kagan over race

Alito trades – In two recent Supreme Court decisions, Justice Samuel Alito clashed with Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson over how race should factor into constitutional analysis—first rejecting claims that President Donald Trump’s comments about Haitians were overtly ra

WASHINGTON — Justice Samuel Alito didn’t just write opinions this month. In the latest batch, he found himself in sharp exchanges over race—one that turned on deportation protections for Haitians, and another that cut into how the court should treat historical gun laws.

On June 25, Alito rejected the argument that President Donald Trump’s comments about Haitians were overtly racial. Justice Elena Kagan. in dissent. said the statements were “so repellent and racially inflected” that Alito declined to include them in the decision allowing the administration to remove deportation protections from Haitians.

The disagreement didn’t stay in the background. It surfaced again in a separate ruling about gun regulations, where Alito and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson traded barbs over whether historical gun laws that discriminated against Black people were relevant to assessing modern rules.

In that gun case. Alito described discriminatory historical laws as “tainted artifacts” that shouldn’t be considered when deciding whether there’s a historical tradition supporting a modern gun rule. Jackson countered that if the court uses history to evaluate today’s laws. “it deepens race-based wounds. by classifying the experiences of those who have been historically excluded as categorically irrelevant.”.

Both decisions, along with an April ruling on the Voting Rights Act, split the Supreme Court along the same ideological lines: the 6-3 conservative bloc on one side and the liberal justices on the other.

For years, the way the court should treat race has been one of its most stubborn fault lines. The conservatives have promoted what they call a “colorblind” approach—one that often treats consideration of race as discriminatory. The liberal justices argue the opposite: that ignoring race doesn’t erase its effects. As Jackson put it, “Black Americans are still saddled with the ramifications of centuries of legally authorized exclusion.”.

The gun fight was anchored in a specific state rule in Hawaii. The law required gun owners to get permission before bringing a firearm into a store or other private property open to the public. The justices disagreed about whether the rule met the historical test the court set in 2022 for evaluating gun regulations.

Hawaii pointed to an 1865 Louisiana statute adopted after the Civil War, intended to prevent anyone from carrying a gun onto a plantation without the landowner’s permission. Part of Louisiana’s “black code” laws, the restriction was aimed at disarming Black people.

Alito. striking down Hawaii’s law. wrote that if the court doesn’t put history aside. then the state’s argument doesn’t stand. “Unless we put history entirely out of our minds. ” he wrote. “Hawaii’s claim that this tainted artifact illuminates the original understanding of the right to keep and bear arms cannot be taken seriously.”.

In her dissent, Jackson argued that under the court’s 2022 framework—New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen—justices “must contend with our Nation’s entire history. warts and all.” She said the court’s approach must grapple with how discriminatory laws shaped the constitutional baseline used today. “This type of nuanced analysis is important. for it values the historical experiences of Black people as targets of invidious race discrimination and ensures that they are not (here again) excluded from the constitutional baseline that Bruen purports to draw. ” she said.

The courtroom tension shifted to deportation protections in the June 25 decision involving Haitians.

One question in that case was whether Trump’s cancellation of the humanitarian program had racial motivations. Trump has repeatedly maligned Haitian immigrants. During a 2024 presidential debate. he claimed. falsely. that Haitians in Ohio were eating people’s pets. saying. “In Springfield. they’re eating the dogs. ” and adding. “The people that came in. they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”.

In December. speaking in Pennsylvania. Trump referred to Haiti as a “hellhole.” He also recounted his 2018 complaints about immigrants coming from “s—hole” countries. saying. “Why can’t we have some people from Norway. Sweden. just a few?. Let’s have a few from Denmark,” and “Send us some nice people.”.

Alito argued those remarks weren’t “overtly racial.” In his view. “in substance all expressed policy view that could rest on race-neutral justifications.” The language could be hot. he wrote. but he said “political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couched in terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago.”.

Kagan rejected that framing. In her dissent, she said it was hard to understand what Alito meant by not “overtly racial.” “Haitians are Black. (Norwegians and Swedes not so much.),” she wrote. She argued that the references to “filth, disease and primitiveness” were “shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes.”.

“It is hard to imagine,” Kagan added, “the statements being made today of any White community.”

Across the pair of cases. the court’s internal split turned on a shared problem: whether constitutional analysis can separate modern rules from the racial realities embedded in historical practice and modern rhetoric. One side says the law can be evaluated without centering race. The other says centering race isn’t about ideology—it’s about confronting what the Constitution’s history has already done to Black Americans.

For now, the decisions stand as the latest reminder that race has become more than a subject of disagreement on the Supreme Court—it is the line that keeps reappearing, shaping outcomes and turning legal questions into confrontations among the justices themselves.

Supreme Court Samuel Alito Elena Kagan Ketanji Brown Jackson race Haitians deportation protections Trump comments gun regulations Bruen Louisiana black code Hawaii gun law