The Justice Who Refuses to Be Silent – Sonia Sotomayor Stands Against the Collapse of Freedom

There are days when the law breaks - not loudly, but with a quiet click, a shadow on paper, a ruling in the archives of the Supreme Court. September 8, 2025, was such a day. The conservative majority of the justices gave the Trump administration the green light to once again send their “roving patrols” - those racially driven mobile squads of the immigration authority ICE - through California. But three voices rose against the roar of the majority. Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina on the highest court of the United States, daughter of Puerto Rican parents, child of the Bronx, jurist with the sharpness of New York asphalt - she wrote a dissent that is more than a legal document. It is a cry of protest. She was supported by Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who signed their own dissenting opinion and together formed a shining counterweight to the decision of the majority.

“This decision is yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.” This is not a technical protocol, this is an oath. Sotomayor refuses obedience to the majority, she writes history in ink that burns. And she goes further: “As of today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of low paid but legal job.” What she is saying is as simple as it is shocking: In America, the land of freedom, it is once again enough to look “wrong,” speak the “wrong” language, or belong to the “wrong” class to be arrested.

This dissent joins the great tradition of judicial warnings - Holmes, Brandeis, Ginsburg - voices that hold the compass in the hour of darkness. But Sotomayor’s words sound like a last bell before the storm surge. She does not just accuse, she warns: that a government has the power to keep millions of people in constant fear is not a footnote, but the point at which democracy breaks. Trump celebrates the ruling, his spokespersons speak of a “victory for law and order.” But in the neighborhoods of Los Angeles and San Diego there is now silence, a silence you can hear before the baton hits the door. And in Washington, the dissent of Sonia Sotomayor remains like a bright light in an increasingly dark hall - a light that Kagan and Jackson, with their support, made shine even brighter. Perhaps one day the ruling itself will be remembered less than these words with which she ended her text:

“I dissent.”