Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she hopes the presidential immunity decision gets overturned in her lifetime, branding some of the court's work among the "crazy things" it has done.
Speaking Saturday at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate, the liberal justice used a civics education event to reopen her fight against the high court's 6-3 ruling that former presidents hold at least presumptive immunity for official acts. The appearance came days after midterm contests in which Democrats swept control of both chambers of Congress.
The Hill reported that Sotomayor, who sits on the board of iCivics, the education group founded by the late Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, spent an hourlong talk focused on voting, democracy, and what she called systemic shifts in the court's jurisprudence. She did not hide her target.
She tied the immunity case directly to her wish list of reversals.
"You know, I've spoken openly about this, there's some opinions that I hope in my lifetime will get overturned. The immunity case is one of them."
That decision, handed down along ideological lines, held that former presidents enjoy broad criminal immunity protections for official acts. In her earlier dissent, Sotomayor wrote that it made President Trump and his successors a "king above the law." She returned to that grievance in public remarks framed as a celebration of the country's 250th anniversary.
Sotomayor went further than a quiet disagreement. She cast her own frequent dissents as a standing protest against the majority's direction and then joked, half joked, about rolling it back.
The Washington Examiner reported her words from the George Washington Presidential Library event at Mount Vernon:
"I dissent a lot. 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 added, "No, seriously."
A sitting justice describing majority holdings as "crazy things" and hoping aloud for their reversal is not ordinary case commentary. It is a public signal that the left wing of the bench still treats the immunity ruling as unfinished political business rather than settled constitutional law.
She also described broader turbulence on the court.
"There have been some systemic changes in my court's jurisprudence in many areas of law."
And she offered a soft prediction that the institution would eventually stabilize on terms the public would accept:
"We'll settle down, too. Not quite sure when. But we will. And a new order will be established that people will begin to understand."
The "new order" she prefers would, by her own account, include scrapping the immunity decision that protects the executive branch from criminal second-guessing of official acts. Conservatives defended that ruling as a necessary guardrail so presidents can discharge their duties without fear that a later administration will turn policy disputes into indictments. Sotomayor still wants it gone.
The Mount Vernon remarks came right after Tuesday's elections. Sotomayor pointed to heavy turnout and used the moment to lecture the public on civic duty.
"We saw the outpouring of voters in on Tuesday."
She continued:
"I tell people all the time, there's no excuse for not voting. There just isn't. Apathy is not acceptable."
Democrats had just taken both chambers of Congress. A justice who hopes to see a major separation-of-powers ruling overturned in her lifetime chose that political backdrop to renew her attack on the immunity precedent and to frame nonvoting as a moral failure. The sequence is plain: election results, then a public wish list for doctrinal reversal.
iCivics work and a 250th-anniversary setting gave the event a nonpartisan gloss. The substance did not. Sotomayor mixed civics talk with open dissatisfaction about "my court's jurisprudence" and a named hope that the immunity case dies on her watch.
The Supreme Court's 6-3 decision established that former presidents have at least presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. The majority drew a line meant to keep the presidency functional. Prosecutors cannot treat every contested executive decision as a future felony exposure.
Sotomayor's dissent cast that protection as monarchy. Her Mount Vernon comments show she has not moved on. She still wants the court to "take back" the holding. She still lists it among opinions she hopes to see overturned while she serves. And she still reaches for language, "crazy things," "king above the law", that treats a core structural ruling as an aberration to be corrected when the votes allow.
No other specific opinions made her public list that day. The immunity case did. That choice matters. It keeps a live political fight aimed at the executive branch's constitutional breathing room, and it comes from a justice who freely admits she dissents a lot and wants doctrinal course corrections in her lifetime.
The court is not a campaign stop. When a justice uses a civics stage to hope aloud for the reversal of a landmark separation-of-powers decision, and to brand majority work "crazy," the public is entitled to hear the message straight: parts of the bench still view that ruling as a political loss to be undone, not as binding law to be applied.
Voters can decide whether that posture strengthens the judiciary, or turns it into another arena for the same fights they just settled at the ballot box.
