WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that immigration agents can resume roving patrols in the Los Angeles area that target people of Latino origin, again granting an emergency request by the Trump administration without offering any explanation.
It was the 18th time since President Donald Trump retook office in January that the court has sided with his administration in an emergency ruling. The court has rejected the president just twice, prompting considerable criticism within the legal community, including from lower court judges.
Such cases arise on the so-called shadow docket, and the current Supreme Court often decides them via terse orders that contain little or, in the case of Monday's decision, no explanation. That differs from the court's traditional practice of hearing oral arguments and issuing a lengthy written opinion.
Last week, 10 federal judges told NBC News that the Supreme Court needed to do more to explain such decisions at a time when they are increasingly facing violent threats and harsh criticism from Trump and his allies.
The frequent rulings for Trump at the Supreme Court can at least appear to validate allegations that some judges are biased against the president, those judges said.
Trump administration officials quickly touted Monday's decision as a major victory even though it technically applies only to a single case in Los Angeles and does not set a nationwide precedent.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described it on X as "a win for the safety and security of the American people and the rule of the law."
Attorney General Pam Bondi said in her own post that immigration agents can now carry out patrols "without judicial micromanagement."
Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is involved in challenging the immigration sweeps, said in an interview that it would not be surprising if Trump administration officials “grotesquely over-read” the decision as “some kind of carte blanche for police to engage in racial profiling."
Trump has already launched immigration crackdowns in Chicago and Washington, D.C., and threatened to send in the military to those and other major U.S. cities.
The cryptic nature of Monday's Supreme Court decision gives little guidance to lower court judges on how to handle future cases.
It did not, however, displace court precedents restricting racial profiling, which remain on the books, a point made by liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissenting opinion.
The decision, Sotomayor wrote, marks "yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket."
She also criticized the majority for its silence, saying that "some situations simply cry out for an explanation."
While the Supreme Court majority did not explain itself, conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a lengthy concurring opinion explaining his view that it is “common sense” that agents who target Latinos and Spanish speakers in certain locations and places of work would not violate the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful searches and seizures, in part because the Los Angeles area has a large population of illegal immigrants.
His opinion, which is not binding, was welcomed by Trump allies and MAGA media commentators. The Department of Homeland Security also quoted from Kavanaugh's opinion in its press statement on the decision.
Asked how Monday's decision would guide future immigration enforcement actions, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that law enforcement "will not be slowed down" but would make arrests only when there is reasonable suspicion as required under law.
More broadly, the flurry of recent decisions in favor of Trump serves as a warning to lower court judges, said Carolyn Shapiro, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
“The message the Supreme Court seems to be sending is any time you rule against the Trump administration, we are likely to stay your order,” Shapiro said. “Is that the message the court wants to send?”
The infighting both within the Supreme Court and the judiciary as a whole over the shadow docket appears to be escalating.
Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson weighed in last month when the court allowed Trump to terminate health research grants. She cited the fictional game of “Calvinball” from the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, in which the only rule is that there are no rules.
“We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins,” Jackson wrote.
Conservative justices, more receptive to Trump’s arguments, have suggested that lower court judges are being recalcitrant in failing to follow the Supreme Court’s lead.
“Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in his own opinion in the health grants case.
That comment had a ripple effect in lower courts.
The judge presiding over the health grants case, Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge William Young, appeared to apologize to Gorsuch, saying he had not intended to defy the high court.
But another judge in the same court, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, pushed back when she ruled on Sept. 3 against the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze federal funding for Harvard University, calling Gorsuch’s comments “unhelpful and unnecessary.”
There have been some signs of justices appearing to take note of some of the lower court dissension, with both Kavanaugh and fellow conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett making conciliatory remarks in public appearances in the last week in apparent responses to NBC News' reporting.
Speaking at a legal conference, Kavanaugh conceded there can be a "lack of clarity" in decisions that can complicate the jobs of lower court judges, according to Politico.
Barett, speaking last week to conservative commentator Bari Weiss, said that "district judges work so hard to get it right.”
Stephen Spaulding, a lawyer at the Brennan Center for Justice, said it is not surprising that lower court judges are struggling to interpret what he called "this black hole that's coming out of the shadow docket."
The decisions also mean the public is left in the dark about what the court is doing, he added.
“It leaves a vacuum that opens the door to the president making these power grabs,” he added.
