Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said there are several decisions from which she dissented, including the decision on presidential immunity, that she hopes the Supreme Court overturns in her lifetime.
“I dissent a lot,” Sotomayor said during an event at the George Washington Presidential Library. “I’m hoping that the court will take back some of the crazy things that it’s done. I’m only joking … maybe not.”
She gave the example of the court’s 2024 decision finding some presidential immunity, in which the court ruled 6-3 that a president has no immunity for unofficial acts, but does have immunity for official acts and acts within his “conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.” Sotomayor dissented from the July 2024 opinion, along with Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“There’s some opinions that I hope in my lifetime will get overturned. The immunity case is one of them,” Sotomayor said on Saturday.
Sotomayor had dissented, arguing that the majority opinion relied “on little more than its own misguided wisdom” and gave President Donald Trump, who at the time was a 2024 presidential candidate, “all the immunity he asked for and more.”
The liberal-leaning justice, who was appointed to the court by former President Barack Obama, also spoke to the importance of voting at the civics event in Virginia, speaking out just days after the 2026 midterm elections, in which a blue wave flipped the House and the Senate into Democratic control.
She told event attendees that the U.S. rule of law is in a “rough patch” and that there are “many challenges to it on so many different levels,” adding that the country is at a “critical point in our history.”
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“Every election now seems really important to people, because they are. And that sense of fear, I know, is not comfortable for many people,” Sotomayor said.
“I don’t know how long it’s going to take to put us back on an even keel,” she added. “I’m hoping it’s … in my lifetime. But even if it’s not in my lifetime, I genuinely believe it will happen.”