WASHINGTON—Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor publicly apologized to Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday after suggesting last week that he didn’t know any blue-collar workers because he had a privileged upbringing.
“At a recent appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law, I referred to a disagreement with one of my colleagues in a prior case, but I made remarks that were inappropriate,” Sotomayor said in a statement released by the court. “I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague.”
On April 7, while discussing a Supreme Court ruling that eased restrictions on investigatory stops by federal immigration agents, Sotomayor criticized Kavanaugh, who wrote an opinion in support of the ruling.
“I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops,” Sotomayor said at the event, according to Bloomberg Law. “This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”
It is common for justices to spar in their written opinions, and they sometimes expound on their legal disagreements in speeches or interviews. But Sotomayor’s comment, with its reference to Kavanaugh’s family, was unusually personal.
Kavanaugh didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Sotomayor was discussing a September 2025 ruling on the court’s emergency docket involving the factors that federal agents can use as a basis to stop people and question them about their immigration status. A district judge had found that federal agents were engaging in illegal profiling by detaining people based on their apparent ethnicity, their use of Spanish and their presence at locations where day laborers congregate.
At the request of the Trump administration, the Supreme Court lifted restrictions that the district judge had imposed, effectively allowing immigration agents to rely upon factors such as language and ethnicity to conduct immigration stops. Sotomayor, along with the court’s two other Democratic appointees, dissented.
The majority didn’t explain its reasoning, but Kavanaugh wrote a separate 10-page opinion explaining why he thought the stops at issue in the case were lawful under longstanding Supreme Court precedent.
“For stops of those individuals who are legally in the country, the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote.
Liberals have decried Kavanaugh’s opinion, pointing to reports that some people of Hispanic descent—including American citizens and legal immigrants—have been detained for hours or even days. The left branded the detentions as “Kavanaugh stops.”
A justice apologizing for public remarks—let alone to another member of the court—is unusual.
In 2016, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg issued two apologies. In the summer of that year, she said she regretted “ill advised” comments she had made that criticized then-candidate Donald Trump. Later in the year, she apologized for criticizing NFL players who declined to stand during the national anthem to protest racism.
Write to James Romoser at james.romoser@wsj.com
