Justice Jackson slams Supreme Court for siding with Trump
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Criticizes Supreme Court’s Tendency to Side with Trump Administration
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In a scathing dissent on Thursday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson slammed the Supreme Court for its recent trend of favoring the Trump administration in cases related to National Institutes of Health grants.
Jackson, who was appointed by President Biden, criticized her colleagues for engaging in what she referred to as “lawmaking” on the shadow docket, where rapid, preliminary decisions are made on a multitude of lawsuits involving the Trump administration.
“This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins,” Jackson wrote.
The justice cited the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of Calvinball, which characterizes it as the practice of applying rules inconsistently for self-serving purposes.
Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks onstage at the 2025 ESSENCE Festival of Culture on July 05, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Arturo Holmes/Getty Images for ESSENCE)
Jackson, the most junior justice on the court, accused the majority of going out of its way to accommodate the Trump administration by allowing the NIH to cancel approximately $783 million in grants that did not align with the administration’s priorities.
Some of the grants in question were focused on research related to diversity, equity, inclusion, COVID-19, and gender identity. Jackson argued that the grants had broader implications and that vital biomedical research was at stake.
“So, unfortunately, this newest entry in the Court’s quest to make way for the Executive Branch has real consequences, for the law and for the public,” Jackson wrote.
