The U.S. Supreme Court tossed out an attempt by Florida to sue California and Washington for allegedly allowing undocumented migrants to obtain commercial truck driver’s licenses, and conservative Justice Clarence Thomas' dissent faced blowback.
The long-shot claim was filed after a high-profile fatal crash last year in Florida involving an undocumented Indian immigrant, and while the majority denied the state's appeal without comment, Thomas wrote that he would have heard the case.
“This court declines to even hear Florida’s claims, even though it has nowhere else to bring them,” Thomas wrote in a dissent joined by fellow conservative Justice Samuel Alito.
But one of his arguments – that Florida had cause to declare war on California over the issuance of driver's licenses if they weren't part of the same country – fell under intense scrutiny.
"Thomas's premise here is flagrant nonsense; that California approving CDLs for people with temporary work authorization but not full legal status is the same as "sending dangerous people into another [state]," wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. "Of course the two are not the same. It shows how captured he is by right-wing media."
"'Mongolia declared war on Uganda today, after Uganda allowed non-citizens to obtain licenses to drive on Ugandan streets,' would be the equivalent, which of course makes no sense at all," posted law professor Joe Dunman of the University of Louisville.
"If California wasn't part of the same country, Florida couldn't afford to go to war with anybody," quipped animation producer Kurt Weldon.
"That reasoning is flat out idiotic," added software engineer William Hamilton. "We know that these Justices are beholden to graft and bribes, we know that they prioritize politics over the Constitution, but are they going senile as well?"
"The Thomas/Alito jurisdictional argument (that #SCOTUS must hear state-v.-state cases) isn't crazy," argued Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck. "But one of the strongest arguments *against* it is that states shouldn't be able to force the Court to have to hear these kinds of suits. Thomas's dissent here may unintentionally reinforce that view."
"Aside from the merits of their dissent, this is some serious chutzpah from Alito and Thomas, who would scoff at a civil rights plaintiff if they made the argument that they had no other venue to bring their claim," marveled Kansas law professor Corey Rayburn Yung.