Ketanji Brown Jackson writes Supreme Court opinion siding with transgender immigrant fighting deportation
Rachel Schilke
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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson authored her third majority opinion since she joined the Supreme Court in a case involving a transgender immigrant facing deportation.
In the ruling on Santos-Zacaria v. Garland released Thursday, the high court ruled that a requirement for noncitizens to challenge deportation must first exhaust all administrative remedies is not jurisdictional, paving the way for Leon Santos-Zacaria, 33, who is transgender and goes by Estrella, to appeal deportation from the United States.
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Jackson wrote the court’s majority opinion, with Justice Clarence Thomas joining Justice Samuel Alito in a short, separate concurring opinion.
A lower court ruled that Santos-Zacaria — who allegedly fled to the United States in 2008 and has been twice removed before returning in 2018 — had not exhausted all measures before filing to appeal the petitioner’s deportation to Mexico in 2019, under immigration statutes.
Santos-Zacaria sought to remain permanently under a statute that gives protection to immigrants if they can show proof they are or will be persecuted in their country of origin. Santos-Zacaria claimed that there were safety risks to returning to Mexico, citing instances of assault and one time when Santos-Zacaria was beaten unconscious.
An immigration judge had previously ruled that Santos-Zacaria did not suffer “past persecution” and, therefore, could not appeal based on the chance of future persecution.
However, the Supreme Court found that the statutory provision “lacks the clear statement necessary to qualify as jurisdictional.”
Brown argued the opinion that jurisdictional treatment, such as litigation, could prevent efficiency that “exhaustion ordinarily advances.”
“Of course, ‘Congress is free to attach’ jurisdictional consequences to a requirement that usually exists as a claimprocessing rule… But to be confident Congress took that unexpected tack, we would need unmistakable evidence, on par with express language addressing the court’s jurisdiction. Nothing close appears here,” the opinion continued.
In Alito’s opinion, he concurred that the statute does not “require the filing of a motion for consideration under the circumstances presented here” and that the decision to grant reconsideration is “discretionary.”
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This is Jackson’s third opinion and continues her streak of landing in the conservative majority on typically non-controversial issues. She did dissent in part to another rule the court released Thursday, National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, which upheld California’s animal welfare law.
The newest justice has also issued dissents in high court decisions where the majority declined to take up a case for consideration, including one where she signaled she would have taken up the case of a death row inmate from Ohio in November.