'Misunderstood the assignment': Supreme Court justice slams colleagues in scathing dissent
Source: Raw Story
November 6, 2025 4:17PM ET
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued a scathing dissent after the court issued a ruling on Thursday that she described as a "back-of-the-napkin" approach to solving the problem at hand. In a 6-3 ruling, the high court reversed a lower court order that blocked President Donald Trump's executive order mandating transgender people only use their gender assigned at birth on their passports.
"As is becoming routine, the Government seeks an emergency stay of a District Court’s preliminary injunction pending appeal. As is also becoming routine, this Court misunderstands the assignment," wrote Jackson in the dissent. "Our task in deciding stay applications is not simply to make a 'back-of-the-napkin assessment of which party has the better legal argument.'"
"Rather, the actual nub of the project (if we choose to involve ourselves in the matter at all) is to fairly determine whether the applicant’s showing justifies our extraordinary intervention. To do this, we consider not only the applicant’s likelihood of success on the merits, but also whether the applicant will suffer irreparable harm absent emergency intervention, as well as the relative harm to the parties and the public interest in the grant or denial of a stay," she continued.
"Here, the balance-of-the-equities factor requires weighing the harm to the Government from not being able to proceed immediately with its allegedly unlawful policy against the harm to the individuals who would be subjected to that policy," Jackson explained, citing the court examples. "Balancing the equities is an important part of the analysis because it avoids unnecessary real-world injury to people with colorable legal claims."
Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/ketanji-brown-jackson-transgender-case/
= new reply since forum marked as read
as I understand them, "[t]he party seeking a preliminary injunctive relief must demonstrate:
1. Irreparable injury in the absence of such an order;
2. That the threatened injury to the moving party outweighs the harm to the opposing party resulting from the order;
3. That the injunction is not adverse to public interest; and
4. That the moving party has a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.
In considering these factors, courts apply a "sliding scale" approach where the more likely a movant will succeed on the merits, the less irreparable harm (to the movant) needs to be shown in granting the injunction."
More at https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/injunctive_relief .
Jackson is objecting that the Court is letting the fourth factor outweigh the others, especially 1 & 2.
If people suffer permanent harm as a result of being mis-gendered, e.g., that would be "irreparable" and should weigh fairly heavily against any deficiency in the plaintiffs' "likelihood of success." That said, if a majority of the Court are already convinced that Trump has the legal authority implement the new requirement, then letting factors 1 &/or 2 outweigh factor 4 would simply be to delay an inevitable ruling in Trump's favor.
I'm not a lawyer so this reply should be considered worth what you paid for it.
