Time churns on, but Ketanji Brown Jackson’s genius springs eternal. In honor of a new year, let’s look back on the Supreme Court justice’s best (worst) moments of 2025.
1. Jackson Argues For Rule By Judiciary
The Supreme Court sat for oral argument in the case of Trump v. CASA in May. Trump had challenged birthright citizenship for certain individuals born in the United States in an executive order, a move promptly struck down by three district courts via “nationwide injunction.” The justices considered the legality of nationwide (or universal) injunctions, which are often issued by a single federal judge, and block the federal government from enforcing a policy across the entire nation.
“I would think we’d want the system to move as quickly as possible to reach the merits of the issue, and maybe have this court decide whether or not the government is entitled to do this under the law,” the justice said during oral argument in May, in the case of Trump v. CASA. “Wouldn’t having universal injunctions actually facilitate that?” (RELATED: Supreme Court Justice Proves She’s Totally Clueless Yet Again)
2. Amy Coney Barrett Goes For The Jugular
In a 6-3 ruling in Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court held that universal injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts,” in the words of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Jackson dissented (obviously), doing so with “deep disillusionment.”
“We will not dwell on [Jackson’s] argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Barrett wrote in response. “We observe only this: [Jackson] decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.”
🚨 Justice Amy Coney Barrett did NOT mince words in this line from her majority opinion. https://t.co/8Fap70ggyI pic.twitter.com/VJTebmj7tv
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 27, 2025
Jackson “offers a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush,” Barrett noted. “In her telling, the fundamental role of courts is to ‘order everyone (including the Executive) to follow the law—full stop.’”
3. Jackson’s Argument ‘Stumbles Out Of The Gate’
The claws came out again in June’s Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic decision, with Jackson and her colleagues throwing thinly veiled barbs at each other’s judicial sensibilities. In a 6-3 decision, the majority sided with Medina, ruling that states are not legally bound to fund abortion facilities like Planned Parenthood.
Jackson, along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented. Jackson accused the majority of “stymying … the country’s great civil rights laws,” to which the majority opinion retorted, that was an “extravagant charge.”
Jackson and Planned Parenthood’s shared line of argument “stumbles out of the gate” and “suffers from a number of problems,” according to the opinion of the court.
“Instead of grappling meaningfully with the test our precedents provide, the dissent proposes to rewrite it,” the opinion reads. “Our precedents do not authorize anything like the dissent’s approach—and for good reasons.”
The court adds: “The dissent’s test would risk obliterating the longstanding line between mere benefits and enforceable rights.”
“To be sure, the dissent assures us that other Medicaid provisions are distinguishable from this one … How? Not based on their text (which the dissent never addresses) but, it seems, based on an unspoken judicial intuition that the provision before us is just more important than others,” says the majority.
An unyielding faith in an unspoken judicial intuition is a pretty good description of Jackson’s tenure on the bench.
4. Jackson Freaks Out Over Immigration Ruling
By a 7-2 margin, the Supreme Court closed a Biden-era immigration loophole, permitting President Donald Trump to revoke parole status for nearly 500,000 migrants in May.
“The Court has plainly botched this assessment today,” Jackson wrote in a dissent.
“It requires next to nothing from the Government with respect to irreparable harm. And it undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the Government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”
5. Wait, You Guys Are Taking This Seriously?
Jackson confessed, at an Indianapolis Bar Association luncheon held July 10, that she was surprised by the formality of her colleagues.
“I think I didn’t realize how formal the Court really is. I kinda thought maybe when the Justices go into conference they let their hair down a little bit,”said Jackson, laughing. “No. no.”
“Was that what you expected?” the event moderator asked.
“I don’t think I expected it … I mean, certainly I got a glimpse of that from the clerkship but I’m talking about what we do behind closed doors,” Jackson said, likely in reference to her clerkship for Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jackson later added: “We speak in order, seniority order. We vote in seniority order. We shake each others’ hands every time, in a ritual that we do before going out to the bench, or if we’re just having a conference day, before conference, every time. And so it’s kind of interesting, and neat, but it’s quite a formal institution.”
🚨 SCOTUS ruled 6-3 in favor of allowing Trump to restrict passports to reflect a person’s biological sex rather than chosen gender.
In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called the order a “pointless but painful perversion of our equitable discretion.” pic.twitter.com/m947RZE0Ct
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 6, 2025
6. Black People Are … Disabled?
During October’s oral argument for Louisiana v. Callais, a redistricting case, Jackson offered a strange defense of racially drawn district lines.
“I guess, I’m thinking of it, of the fact that remedial action absent discriminatory intent is really not a new idea in the civil rights laws, and my kind of paradigmatic example of this is something like the [Americans with Disabilities Act],” Jackson said. (RELATED: Ketanji Brown Jackson Gets Snippy With Lawyer During Hearing On Race-Based Districts)
“Congress passed the [ADA] against the backdrop of a world that was generally not accessible to people with disabilities. And so it was discriminatory in effect, because these folks were not able to access these buildings. And it didn’t matter whether the person who built the building or owned the building intended for them to be exclusionary, that’s irrelevant. Congress said the facilities have to be made equally open to people with disabilities, if readily possible. I guess, I don’t understand why that’s not what’s happening here.”
I’ll leave it to you to work out the implications of that line of logic.
Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC