Barrett gives ominous signal on how she'll swing on Trump's most important fights: expert

A little-noticed Supreme Court concurrence may have just telegraphed how right-wing justice Amy Coney Barrett will rule on some of the most consequential legal battles of the Trump era, according to a detailed analysis by Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck.

At issue is a May 26 ruling in Margolin v. National Association of Immigration Judges, which, on its surface, was a narrow procedural decision. But buried inside it was a concurrence by Justice Clarence Thomas, joined, critically, by Barrett, that would have gone further and slammed the courthouse door on federal employees challenging politically controlled administrative tribunals.

The concurrence matters, Vladeck argued Thursday, because Barrett's vote is so often the decisive one. The case involves what legal scholars call "channeling," the doctrine that plaintiffs must route their claims through designated administrative forums before reaching a federal court. The Trump administration has leaned heavily on this doctrine across multiple fronts, from the Mahmoud Khalil immigration case to grant-termination disputes, as a way to force challengers into forums the executive branch itself controls.

Vladeck said the administration has effectively captured or hollowed out those same forums and insists they remain the only available venue. It is, in his words, "a one-way ratchet" that benefits the executive.

Barrett has previously surprised observers with skeptical questioning of Trump's birthright citizenship arguments. But her voluntary, public decision to join Thomas's most aggressive pro-channeling position — in a case where the full court said nothing on the merits — is, Vladeck warned, "genuinely ominous."

"She is doing so on purpose," he wrote.

With cases like Khalil still working through the courts and the Supreme Court already reshaping legal access across multiple fronts, Vladeck concluded: "I hope I am reading too much into it; I worry mightily that I'm not."