Ketanji Brown Jackson Is an Embarrassment to the Supreme Court

Just as conservatives warned from the moment President Joe Biden nominated her, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s selection to the Supreme Court has been a complete embarrassment to both the Court and the entire judicial branch. Jackson’s latest tantrum in defense of the unconstitutional racial gerrymandering of Congressional districts further proves that she simply does not have the legal acumen or baseline objectivity required to be a Supreme Court justice.

Jackson first joined the bench in 2022 following the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer. Biden nominated Jackson to fulfill a 2020 campaign promise to select a black woman, immediately leading to accusations that she was a “DEI hire.”

Jackson’s confirmation hearing seemed to confirm that theory, as she repeatedly struggled to answer basic legal questions and came across as deeply partisan. In one infamous exchange, Jackson told Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) that she “can’t” define the word “woman.”

Jackson has done little in the four years since that moment to reassure anyone that she is fit to be on the Court. Instead, she has often clashed with her colleagues – even with her fellow liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. In some cases, the other justices have had to correct her on simple legal matters and explain the basic concept of cases to her.

For example, in a July 2025 case, Jackson apparently failed to understand the question before the court concerning a Trump executive order on “reductions in force,” or downsizing the federal workforce. The order in question and an accompanying memo had simply instructed federal agencies to submit workforce reduction plans to the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

This distinction is crucial. The order was not actually implementing layoffs, but rather instructing agencies to draw up plans for a reduction in force.

A federal district court judge in California issued a universal injunction against the order and memo – effectively saying that the President does not have the authority to order executive branch agencies to submit plans for a reduction in force. The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court for an emergency stay of that order.

In a terse two-paragraph decision, the High Court sided with the Trump administration and lifted the lower court’s injunction. Although the decision was unsigned, Justice Jackson appears to have been the only one to disagree with the other eight justices, issuing an astonishingly hostile 15-page dissent, accusing her colleagues of allowing Trump to take a “wrecking ball” to the federal government.

Jackson’s description of the case was so off base that Justice Sotomayor felt compelled to issue a concurring opinion directly addressing Jackson’s false claims.

“I agree with Justice Jackson that the President cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates,” Sotomayor wrote. “Here, however, the relevant Executive Order directs agencies to plan reorganizations and reductions in force ‘consistent with applicable law’… The plans themselves are not before this Court, at this stage, and we thus have no occasion to consider whether they can and will be carried out consistent with the constraints of law.”

A similar situation played out this March after the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of a Colorado counselor who faced punishment for helping people work through their same-sex attractions or gender dysphoria.

Justice Elena Kagan joined with Sotomayor and the six right-leaning justices to rule against the Colorado law banning so-called “conversion therapy,” determining that it violated the viewpoint neutrality principle of the First Amendment.

Again, one of the other two liberal justices – this time Elena Kagan – was forced to correct Jackson’s lone dissent. Kagan pointed out that Jackson was “reimagining—and in that way collapsing—the well-settled distinction between viewpoint-based and other content-based speech restrictions.”

In another decision last June curbing lower courts’ ability to issue universal injunctions on Trump administration actions, Justice Amy Coney Barrett rebuked Justice Jackson’s dissenting opinion, accusing it of being “detached from constitutional history” and embracing an “imperial Judiciary.”

The most recent embarrassment for Jackson came on the heels of the Louisiana v. Callais ruling at the end of April.

As AMAC Newsline previously reported, the Supreme Court in that case affirmed that states cannot draw congressional maps with the express purpose of favoring one racial group over another – racial gerrymandering. Louisiana, based on a lower court’s ruling, had created two black-majority congressional districts that were unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered.

While the Court’s ruling against racial gerrymandering drew predictable opposition from Sotomayor and Kagan, a subsequent technical decision provoked a dissent from only Jackson.

With multiple state primaries approaching, including in Louisiana, the Court granted a request to immediately implement the ruling. The Court “ordinarily waits 32 days after the entry of the Court’s judgment to send the opinion and a certified copy of the judgment to the clerk of the lower court,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the May 5 ruling. This is so the losing side can petition for a rehearing.

However, in this case, states needed to redraw maps quickly – and in Louisiana’s situation, needed to postpone the primaries to comply with the ruling. Furthermore, neither side expressed an interest in appealing the judgment.

Jackson issued the lone dissent, complaining the ruling “spawned chaos in the State of Louisiana.” She also accused the Court of letting “power,” not “principles,” rule.

Justice Alito, Justice Clarence Thomas, and even the normally reserved Neil Gorsuch took the rare step of responding to Jackson’s accusations. Alito first pointed out that the Court had effectively decided the case seven months ago, hinting that Jackson had delayed the release of the opinion in an apparent attempt to prevent states from redrawing their maps ahead of the midterms.

“The dissent would require that the 2026 congressional elections in Louisiana be held under a map that has been held to be unconstitutional,” the trio of justices wrote, highlighting the absurdity of Jackson’s argument.

They also called Jackson’s suggestion that the Court should let the unconstitutional maps be used “baseless and insulting,” arguing that such a decision would itself show “partiality.” Jackson’s “rhetoric” is what truly “lacks restraint,” the justices wrote.

Jackson’s demeanor and jurisprudence have similarly been recognized by legal scholars as being chaotic and totally unmoored from the standards expected of a Supreme Court justice.

As Cornell University Law Professor William Jacobson put it, Jackson is a “hand grenade.”

“She’s very derisive towards her colleagues,” Jacobson told radio host Tony Katz. “She’s very offensive towards them.” The legal scholar added that it is “unbecoming of a Justice of the Supreme Court” to attack her colleagues and call them names.

Legal expert Jonathan Turley likewise noted that Jackson has “developed a radical and chilling jurisprudence” and that her “frequent sole dissents and accusatory rhetoric have drawn not just the ire of her conservative colleagues but also that of her liberal colleagues.”

But it is precisely these qualities that make Jackson a hero to hard-left progressives. As Democrats renew their push to pack the Supreme Court with left-wing radicals, Americans should understand that Jackson is the model for the new seats that Democrats want to add.

For Jackson as for her Democrat Party backers, the law and even the Constitution are obstacles to overcome rather than a guiding light. What should be most alarming is not that Jackson doesn’t know the law, but that she simply doesn’t care to follow it.

Editor’s note: The author works for William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection.

Matt Lamb is an AMAC Newsline contributor and associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.