Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said on Saturday that she hopes the court will one day reverse its 2024 decision granting former presidents broad criminal immunity, singling out the ruling as one she hopes to see overturned 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, the Virginia estate of George Washington.
"I dissent a lot. I'm hoping that the court will take back some of the crazy things that it's done. I'm only joking — maybe not," she told the audience, adding that she has sympathy for teachers trying to explain the law because "there's been some systemic changes in my court's jurisprudence."
Sotomayor authored the dissent from the court's three liberal justices in Trump v. United States, decided July 1, 2024. The 6-3 ruling held that former presidents have absolute immunity for actions within their core constitutional powers and at least presumptive immunity for other official acts. In her dissent, she wrote that the decision "makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law."
The remarks were her first public comments on this week's midterm contests, in which Democrats swept control of both chambers of Congress, according to The Hill, which first reported the event. Sotomayor was speaking as part of a multi-day event marking the 250th anniversary of the United States, alongside Louise Dubé, chief executive of iCivics, the education group founded by the late Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Sotomayor serves on iCivics' board.
No case currently before the Supreme Court asks it to revisit presidential immunity, and a reversal would require a new prosecution or lawsuit working its way through the lower courts — a process that takes years.
