Angry Spat Between Justices Alito and Sotomayor Was Reportedly Result of a ‘Misunderstanding’

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The Supreme Court downplayed the angry, very public spat that erupted between Justices Samuel Alito and Sonya Sotomayor this week as nothing more than a “misunderstanding” by the conservative, according to CNN.

The unusual exchange between the two justices played out Thursday as the Supreme Court handed down a number of decisions, including one involving asylum at the Southern Border. Alito had written the majority opinion in the case, in which the court handed down a 6-3 decision allowing the Trump administration to stop asylum seekers at the border.

Alito had appeared stunned when Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina justice, read her stinging dissent from the bench, in which she declared “more people will die” because of the decision.

“If I had known what the dissent was going to say, I would have explained my ruling more,” Alito declared during the exchange.

The case, Mullin v. Al Otro Lado, was one of two huge immigration wins for the Trump Administration on Thursday, with Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joining the majority. Liberal Justices Elana Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined Sotomayor’s dissent.

In a separate 6-3 decision in the case of Mullin v. Doe, the court also gave the Trump Administration the power to unilaterally end Temporary Protected Status for migrants. In that case, Kagan wrote the dissent, with Sotomayor and Jackson joining her.

Alito’s apparently furious reaction to his colleague raised eyebrows, with CNN’s Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic describing the scene:

He just sits there kind of stone-faced, and everyone’s like, wow! And he definitely suggested he was blindsided.

In a statement to CNN on Friday, a court spokesperson dismissed the unusual display.

“Justice Alito was notified in advance by Justice Sotomayor’s chambers that she would be reading a dissent from the bench,” the court spokesperson said.

“It was a misunderstanding on Justice Alito’s part,” they added.

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