Statement: Supreme Court ruling Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo

I write today with profound outrage at the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent 6-3 stay in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo which allows federal authorities, specifically ICE agents, to resume investigative stops in Los Angeles based on race, language, location, or occupation. This decision is a flagrant assault on the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against “unreasonable searches and seizures” and a moral abandonment by the Court.

This decision overturns a well-reasoned injunction that had stopped ICE from using race, ethnicity, language, day-labor sites, or low-wage jobs as grounds for suspicion unless supported by clear facts. Justice Kavanaugh argued that these same factors could count toward “reasonable suspicion” when combined with other details, a standard that reopens the door to sweeping, racially biased stops.

A mere year after the Supreme Court eradicated race-conscious admissions deeming them unconstitutional in cases like Harvard and UNC (decided June 29, 2023) this ruling underscores a chilling consistency: the Court dismantles structural efforts to combat inequality, only to sanction the state’s power to target marginalized bodies themselves. In Harvard/UNC, race-based considerations in educational and hiring contexts were struck down, labelling them incompatible with the Equal Protection Clause. 

Now, the Court permits law enforcement to operate on skin tone, accent, or job factors deeply tied to race and class with impunity. This is completely hypocritical, it is a betrayal of the idea that our institutions should protect the vulnerable rather than embolden them to be surveilled.

As Justice Sotomayor warned in her dissent, “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job... Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent”. The Supreme Court’s silence issuing an unsigned, unexplained order magnifies its moral bankruptcy. This move legitimizes racial profiling as policy and weakens protections, not just in LA, but across the nation. We must fight back in every sphere of civic life so that no person is deemed guilty for how they look, sound, or where they work.

Carmen Perez-Jordan

President/CEO of The Gathering for Justice