Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented Tuesday from their colleagues’ refusal to let Florida mount a lawsuit that one of its targets described as a “political stunt” announced on Fox News.
The Republican-led state sought to sue Washington state and California for allegedly “defying federal law by providing commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens who cannot read English,” as Thomas’ dissent for the duo put it.
He recounted that Florida alleged the two Democratic-led states created conditions for “the disturbing phenomenon of illegal-alien truck drivers causing fatal accidents on the road.”
Although Thomas and Alito arguably are two of the most right-wing justices, and their framing of the case sympathized with Florida’s stance, their objection was formally procedural rather than politically ideological. This case wasn’t a typical appeal that a losing party takes from a lower court loss but rather an attempt to invoke the court’s “original jurisdiction” to hear lawsuits between states initiated at the high court.
“I respectfully dissent from the Court’s denial of Florida’s motion because we cannot refuse to hear suits between States,” Thomas wrote Tuesday, lamenting that the majority “declines to even hear Florida’s claims, even though it has nowhere else to bring them.” He and Alito have made similar objections before, such as when the high court rejected Missouri’s bid to intervene in Donald Trump’s hush money prosecution in 2024.
Successfully opposing Florida’s suit, California and Washington called it both procedurally and substantively lacking.
In its opposition brief, California officials said that the red state had failed “to satisfy the basic prerequisites” for its complaint and that its underlying claims “are also patently meritless.” The West Coast state said Florida’s claims “turn on its unfounded assumption” that California’s motor vehicle agency doesn’t verify applicants’ legal presence in the U.S. or test for English-language proficiency before issuing commercial driver’s licenses. “But that is incorrect,” California officials said, maintaining that their state law requires verifying legal presence and English proficiency and that the state “in fact does so.”
Washington officials called the failed filing “a political stunt, not a real claim.” Its opposition brief said Florida’s attorney general announced the lawsuit on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, “issuing a press release modeled on a boxing fight card proclaiming: ‘Attorney General James Uthmeier is taking California Governor Gavin Newsom to the U.S. Supreme Court,’ and ‘Florida Leads With Support for the Trump Administration.’”
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