A day after Alito's testy response to Sotomayor's dissent, court says it was a 'misunderstanding'

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor (seated left) and Justice Samuel Alito (seated second from right). Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

As the Supreme Court heads into the announcement of its final and hugely important opinions next week, there are reverberations from this week's announcements, and Justice Samuel Alito's public rebuke of his colleague Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

On Thursday, Justice Alito summarized from the bench three very big opinions he authored for the court's six justice conservative majority. Alito, unlike most of his colleagues, doesn't spend much time on these summaries. And it is rare that a justice has three big opinions to announce, but it is almost the end of the term, and there are a lot of big cases still outstanding.

The first case he announced came and went. Alito then moved on to a second case, this one tests whether migrants may apply for asylum in the U.S. by going to one of several ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexican border, and presenting themselves for admission. This entails presenting documents that persuade an asylum officer that applicants' fear of persecution in their home country is credible enough to allow them to enter the U.S. while their asylum application is processed. Alito's opinion ruled in favor of the Trump administration's policy of refusing all such applicants by blocking them at the border. It was a policy also followed at one time by the Obama administration until it was blocked by the lower courts.

After Alito finished his summary of the opinion, he paused, at which point Justice Sotomayor read a summary of her contrary views in dissent. When she finished, however, Justice Alito did not move on to the announcement of his third opinion. Instead, he did something that nobody in the press corps ever remembers happening before. Looking much as if he had just bitten into a lemon, Alito said, "There is much that I would have added to my bench statement had I known there would be a dissent read." And he then went on to a short extemporaneous rebuttal.

What caused the hissy fit? Did Sotomayor really fail to tell him she would have an oral dissent? That really would have been a breach of the court's practices. A justice typically notifies the chief justice and the author of the majority opinion in writing if there is to be an oral dissent.

In response Friday to an inquiry from NPR came this terse statement from the court's public information office.

"Justice Alito was notified in advance by Justice Sotomayor's chambers that she would be reading a dissent from the bench. It was a misunderstanding on Justice Alito's part."