Roberts reins in Sotomayor when she takes over hearing, interrupts lawyer

Sonia Sotomayor, one of the nine members of the Supreme Court bench, long has been known to be demanding.

She’s complained that she’s traumatized when her liberal agenda doesn’t win at the court.

And she’s known to try to influence factors outside the court’s jurisdiction, recently telling lawyers at a leftist conclave meeting while President Donald Trump is in office that “we” cannot lose the battles “we are facing.”

Such a public alignment with one side on multiple cases that will appear before the high court was a stunning alteration to the neutrality expected from judges.

Now, during a hearing on the constitutionality of the 600 federal judges across the nation all having the right to dictate and control executive branch decisions on the management of its agencies, she’s even drawn a public reaction from Chief Justice John Roberts.

He had to rein her in, during the hearing that also addresses Trump’s interpretation of birthright citizenship to mean that those children born of parents not legally entitled to residency in the United States are not automatically U.S. citizens.

Fox News noted it was after “repeated interruptions” by Sotomayor of lawyers arguing for the executive branch that Roberts had to interrupt, too.

“Can I hear the rest of his answer?” Roberts added to the conversation.

The report described Roberts has having “reined in” Sotomayor.

“Sotomayor dominated questioning for several minutes at the outset of Thursday’s argument after taking over from Justice Clarence Thomas. She pressed U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer for President Donald Trump’s administration on several points relating to the authority for federal courts to issue nationwide injunctions, often speaking over the lawyer and interrupting him.”

The report said Sotomayor was actually arguing against the executive branch’s constitutional authority, insisting that his order invalidating birthright citizenship violated four Supreme Court precedents.

And she was arguing on behalf of the challengers to the president’s policy that that justified a federal judge granting an injunction stopping executive branch actions nationwide.

“You are claiming that not just the Supreme Court, that both the Supreme Court and no lower court, can stop an executive from universally violating holdings by this court,” she charged.

“We are not claiming that because we’re conceding that there could be an appropriate case only in class only,” Sauer said.

“But I hear that …,” Sotomayor interrupted.

Then Roberts stepped in.

Sauer then elaborated on the president’s position that federal courts can intervene on behalf of specific plaintiffs before them, but not nationwide, except that the Supreme Court can do that in some circumstances.

Trump’s lawyers have argued nationwide injunctions exceed the authority of the district courts, which are the entry level courts to the federal system.

They violate equitable authority and create a wide range of problems, he said.

Universal injunctions “require judges to make rushed, high-stakes, low-information decisions,” Sauer said. “They operate asymmetrically, forcing the government to win everywhere,” and “invert,” in the administration’s view, the ordinary hierarchical hierarchy of appellate review. They create the ongoing risk of conflicting judgments,” Fox explained.

The decision in the fast-tracked case, expected in weeks or even days, could impact the more than 310 federal lawsuits that leftists and others have launched against Trump during his second term in office.

WND has reported on Sotomayor’s well-established reputation as a leftist on the court, supporting all manner of Democrat causes and opposing Trump.

Her activism moved into new territory recently when she told a leftist conference, “Right now we can’t lose the battles we are facing.”

She said, without identifying specific “battles,” said, “In all of the uncertainty that exists at this moment, this is our time to stand up and be heard.”

“If you’re not used to fighting losing battles, don’t become a lawyer. Our job is to stand for people who can’t do it themselves,” she said.

Actually, according to constitutional expert Jonathan Turley, who not only has testified before Congress as an expert on the Constitution but has represented members in court in constitutional disputes, Sotomayor previously has been scorched for “making public comments that some viewed as overly political or partisan.”

That topic included her demands that law students organize to support abortion rights, a subject that has been before the court many times and undoubtedly will appear there again.

Turley noted Sotomayor’s blasts “presumably” targeted President Trump.

“Sotomayor made a number of inspiring comments to encourage lawyers to pursue justice despite the odds or challenges,” Turley explained.

But they “appeared to veer into more partisan territory.”

Her reference to “we” was a surprise, he said, and many viewed it as a rallying cry for “the left.”

He explained, “Clearly, such comments are subject to different interpretations. Newspapers like the New York Times made the obvious connection, stating that it was made ‘against the backdrop of immense stress on lawyers and the legal system from the Trump administration.'”

Leftist lawyer Marc Elias, a key part of the fabricated 2016 conspiracy theory assembled by Democrats that alleged “Russia collusion” on the part of Trump’s campaign then, credited Sotomayor with “solidarity” with leftist ideals.

“She understands that while we must bring difficult cases and be willing to lose, we must always fight to win. And by lending her voice in ‘solidarity,’ she affirmed that it is ‘our time to stand up and be heard,” he said.

Turley noted that Sotomayor previously lobbied publicly for abortion, telling students, “You know, I can’t change Texas’ law, but you can, and everyone else who may or may not like it can go out there and be lobbying forces in changing laws that you don’t like. I am pointing out to that when I shouldn’t because they tell me I shouldn’t. But my point is that there are going to be a lot of things you don’t like” and require public action.

He said Sotomayor’s calls to “fight this fight” were injudicious.

“The court is set to hear a number of key cases on the Trump policies, including a key argument next week on the rapidly expanding number of national injunctions imposed by district courts. This is not the time to be seen as speaking in ‘solidarity’ with one side,” he said.