Ketanji Brown Jackson Calls Out The Conservative Supreme Court Justices As Partisan Hacks

Supreme Court justices often disagree with each other and write opinions that clash, but Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s open and blunt criticism of her conservative colleagues stood out in this case. She basically accused them of twisting the law to help their political side, something that rarely gets said so directly by a sitting justice.

The case was about whether President Donald Trump could cancel certain National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, and whether states, health groups, and other plaintiffs had the right to challenge that decision. The argument was that Trump’s cancellation was “arbitrary and capricious,” meaning it lacked proper reasoning, and that it violated the rules under the Administrative Procedure Act — a law meant to make sure government agencies act fairly and follow proper procedures.

Five conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — decided that the plaintiffs could not challenge the cancellation in a regular federal court. Instead, they said these groups would have to sue in a special court that mainly handles monetary claims. But the problem is, the plaintiffs weren’t asking for money; they wanted their grants back. Another five justices — John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Barrett, and Jackson — said these kinds of claims should be allowed in district courts, where they normally belong.

Justice Jackson, nominated by President Joe Biden, wrote in her dissent that the conservative justices had created a confusing and unfair system. She said their decision made it almost impossible for schools, researchers, scientists, and health care providers to get their canceled grants restored. According to her, this ruling sends plaintiffs on a pointless and exhausting legal journey with little hope of success.

She compared the court’s approach to “Calvinball,” a game from the comic strip *Calvin & Hobbes* where players make up the rules as they go along. In her words, the conservative majority seemed to have only two rules: one, that there are no fixed rules, and two, that this administration always wins. Her point was that the court’s conservatives were bending the law to favor Trump’s policies, even when there was no strong reason for them to rule in this particular case.

This kind of legal maneuvering has shown up in other cases during Trump’s second term. The conservative justices have repeatedly used emergency or “shadow docket” decisions to allow Trump’s policies to take effect quickly, even before full legal challenges could be heard. These included actions like firing federal employees, weakening unions, and removing agency officials. In many situations, even if people eventually won their cases, the damage was already done.

In this case, Jackson argued, the court’s decision left no real way for the plaintiffs to get their funding back. They might be able to prevent future grant cancellations, but the already canceled grants would remain gone. That, she pointed out, is the opposite of how courts are supposed to work — courts are meant to fix harm for the people who bring a case, not leave them empty-handed.

She warned that this ruling could harm scientific and medical research by cutting off money and slowing down discoveries. In her view, the court was changing the rules on the fly to protect political allies rather than applying the law fairly.