Sotomayor Says She Hopes Supreme Court Will Overturn Presidential Immunity Ruling

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said on Saturday that she hopes the Supreme Court will overturn its 2024 ruling that gave presidents broad immunity from prosecution for official actions, calling it one of the opinions she would like to see reversed in her lifetime.

"There's some opinions that I hope in my lifetime will get overturned. The immunity case is one of them," Sotomayor said during a public discussion about civics education at the Washington Library at Mount Vernon, George Washington's estate in Virginia.

Sotomayor wrote the dissent for the court's three liberal justices in the 2024 case. She returned to that disagreement in plain language on Saturday. "I'm hoping that the court will take back some of the crazy things that it's done. I'm only joking," she said, before adding, "Maybe not," and naming the immunity decision.

The ruling she dissented from

The court ruled 6 to 3 in 2024 that a president may not be prosecuted for exercising core constitutional powers and is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for official acts. The decision reshaped the federal case against President Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. "The President is not above the law," Roberts wrote. "But under our system of separated powers, the President may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for his official acts."

Sotomayor's dissent answered that the decision "makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law."

Teachers, civics and a changing court

The Mount Vernon discussion was about civics education. Sotomayor serves on the board of iCivics, the civics education group founded by the late Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. She said she has sympathy for teachers who have to explain what is happening with the law, because "there's been some systemic changes in my court's jurisprudence."

She told the audience the court's direction would settle in time. "We'll settle down, too. Not quite sure when. But we will. And a new order will be established that people will begin to understand," she said, according to Politico.

A rough patch for the rule of law

Asked how hopeful she is about the rule of law, Sotomayor said it is going through a "rough patch."

"So many challenges to it on so many different levels. This is a really critical point in our history," she said. "Every election now seems really important to people, because they are. And that sense of fear, I know, is not comfortable for many people."

She said the country will come out of this period, though it will be changed. "There are some norms we may have lost forever," she said. "But I don't think that we will fail as a democracy. But I think we're going to have a hard patch figuring out what that means."

What her remarks can and cannot change

A justice's public remarks do not reopen a decided case. The immunity ruling could only be revisited if a future case reaches the court and a majority agrees to reconsider it, and the court has given no sign that it plans to do so. Sotomayor framed her comments as a hope, not a prediction.

Her appearance came days after Republicans lost control of the House and the Senate in the November 3 midterm elections. The loss of the Senate means it will be difficult for Trump, who nominated three justices in his first term, to win confirmation for another nominee if a seat opens.