Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday accused the Supreme Court majority of overstepping its authority and “making rhetoric” for lower courts in Washington, D.C., at odds with the views of her colleagues in a Fourth Amendment case involving whether police had reasonable suspicion to stop a man.
Jackson, a Biden appointee, was the only judge to rule for the D.C. Court of Appeals, which last year found the officer improperly stopped the man while he was in his car. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2, overturning the lower court’s decision and authorizing the police stop. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s most senior liberal appointee appointed by Obama, also broke with the majority opinion but refused to join Jackson’s dissent, further casting Jackson as an outlier among liberal justices.
The Supreme Court ruling emphasized that police have broad ability to rely on the “totality of the circumstances” when making a stop, noting that sometimes seemingly trivial independent facts about a situation can be combined with more suspicious behavior to justify a police stop or arrest on reasonable suspicion.
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Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson attends the Essence Festival on July 5, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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But Jackson objected to what she said was the high court’s interference in lower courts’ routine assessments of which facts were relevant and which were not.
“I cannot understand why this fact-based decision needs to be corrected by the courts,” Jackson wrote.
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The case stemmed from a dispatch call to Washington, D.C. police at 2 a.m. in 2023 reporting a suspicious vehicle. When an officer arrived at the scene, the pair ran from the vehicle while the remaining passengers slowly began to back out of the parking lot with the doors still open. The D.C. Attorney General’s Office argued on behalf of police that “the totality” of the facts constituted reasonable suspicion to stop the person who remained in the vehicle.
The Supreme Court’s unsigned opinion said the lower court improperly ignored the circumstances in which two people fled the vehicle before a third person was stopped by an officer. Jackson said the D.C. Court of Appeals had done a basic “sifting” of the facts and concluded the cease-and-desist action was unwarranted.
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On October 7, 2022, the justices posed for a formal group photo at the Supreme Court Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
Police lawyers argued: “In the circumstances, with only a few seconds to decide whether to intervene, the officer was entirely justified in detaining the driver.”
They added, “Shortly after stopping the driver, the officer observed the vehicle’s windows being smashed and the ignition being turned off, confirming the vehicle was stolen.”
While Jackson is known for her aggressive support of court intervention in broader constitutional battles involving presidential power, her dissent in this case underscored the need for judicial restraint.
The Supreme Court ruling emphasized that police have broad capabilities and can rely on the “totality of the circumstances” when making a stop.
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Jackson argued that the lower court correctly considered the Fourth Amendment, which provides that people have the right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” She said the case did not merit “unusual summary reversal steps”.
“I’m not sure why our court saw fit to intervene in this case, let alone immediately intervene,” Jackson said. “If the intervention reflects concerns that the DCCA misunderstood the Fourth Amendment’s overall circumstances analysis, then that concern appears to be unfounded.”
Original source of the article: Jackson singles out colleagues after court intervenes in routine police stop
