2026年4月15日 / 美国东部时间晚上11:59 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
美国最高法院大法官索尼娅·索托马约尔周三就公开批评大法官布雷特·卡瓦诺关于移民拘捕的一项裁决——并似乎暗示她的保守派同事的观点源于脱离现实的成长背景——道歉。
“在最近堪萨斯大学法学院的一场活动中，我提到了在先前案件中与一位同事的分歧，但我发表了不当言论，”索托马约尔在最高法院周三发布的一份声明中说道。“我对自己造成伤害的评论感到后悔。我已经向我的同事道歉。”
索托马约尔没有点名卡瓦诺。但据报道，她在上周堪萨斯州的活动中罕见地针对一项最高法院命令进行了针对性批评，卡瓦诺是该案多数派中唯一以书面形式阐明理由的大法官。
2025年9月的这项命令为美国移民与海关执法局（ICE）在洛杉矶恢复大规模突袭扫清了道路，叫停了限制ICE执法方式的下级法院裁决。下级法院认定该机构非法拘留民众，并表示ICE在判断是否有合理理由怀疑某人非法入境美国时，不能仅依据种族、职业或使用西班牙语等因素。
卡瓦诺撰写了一份协同意见书，对下级法院的裁决提出质疑，他写道，族裔不能成为某人被拦截的唯一理由，但可以是一个相关因素。他还在其中一处写道，涉案的移民拘捕通常是“短暂停留”，被拘留者一旦证明自己合法身处美国即可离开。
据彭博社报道，索托马约尔在堪萨斯大学的活动中提及了这些评论，称她的一位同事写道“这些只是临时停留”。
“这来自一个父母是专业人士的男人。他可能根本不认识任何按小时计酬工作的人，”索托马约尔继续说道。
卡瓦诺出生于华盛顿特区地区，父亲是说客，母亲是检察官兼法官。索托马约尔在布朗克斯的公共住房建筑群长大，父亲在她9岁时去世后，主要由出生在波多黎各的母亲——一名护士——抚养长大。两位大法官都曾就读于耶鲁法学院，入学时间相差11年。
最高法院大法官公开批评彼此的成长背景实属罕见，法院的自由派和保守派大法官通常都会强调，他们的分歧并非个人恩怨。2018年卡瓦诺获得参议院确认后，索托马约尔在接受美国有线电视新闻网采访时，将九位大法官称为一个“大家庭”。
上周在阿拉巴马大学的一场演讲活动中被问及与其他八位大法官的关系时，索托马约尔表示，“我们大多数人其实都互相喜欢”，因为“我不会认为他们的投票方式定义了他们本人”。
“我敢说，几乎和他们所有人，我都保持着文明的关系。和其中许多人，我敢说我们是朋友，”索托马约尔说道。
但索托马约尔在该项ICE拘捕命令发布时曾尖锐批评该裁决。她在一份与另外两位自由派大法官联名的异议书中写道，联邦政府——以及卡瓦诺的协同意见书——“几乎已经宣告，所有拉美裔，无论是否为美国公民，只要从事低收入工作，都随时可能被抓捕”。
“我们不应该生活在一个政府可以抓捕任何看起来像拉美裔、会说西班牙语、似乎从事低收入工作的人的国家。我们不能在宪法自由被侵蚀时袖手旁观，我提出异议，”她写道。
Sotomayor apologizes for criticizing Kavanaugh over ICE arrests, in rare public Supreme Court clash
April 15, 2026 / 11:59 PM EDT / CBS News
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor apologized Wednesday for publicly criticizing Justice Brett Kavanaugh over a ruling on immigration stops — and seeming to imply that her conservative colleague’s views were shaped by an out-of-touch upbringing.
“At a recent appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law, I referred to a disagreement with one of my colleagues in a prior case, but I made remarks that were inappropriate,” Sotomayor said in a statement issued by the Supreme Court on Wednesday. “I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague.”
Sotomayor did not mention Kavanaugh by name. But during last week’s event in Kansas, she reportedly offered rare — and personal — criticism of a Supreme Court order in which Kavanaugh was the only member of the majority to lay out his rationale in writing.
The September 2025 order cleared the way for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to resume broad sweeps in Los Angeles, halting a lower court ruling that restricted ICE’s practices. The lower court found the agency had unlawfully detained people, and said ICE could not rely solely on factors like race, occupation or use of Spanish in deciding whether it had reasonable suspicion that somebody is in the United States illegally.
Kavanaugh penned a concurrence that questioned the lower court ruling, writing that ethnicity cannot be the sole reason why somebody is stopped but could be a relevant factor. He also wrote at one point that the immigration stops in question were typically a “brief encounter,” with detainees free to go once they demonstrate they are in the country legally.
Sotomayor referred to those comments during her appearance at the University of Kansas, saying one of her colleagues wrote that “these are only temporary stops.”
“This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour,” Sotomayor continued, according to Bloomberg.
A native of the Washington, D.C., area, Kavanaugh’s father was a lobbyist and his mother was a prosecutor and judge. Sotomayor grew up in a Bronx public housing complex, and was primarily raised by her Puerto Rico-born mother — a nurse — after her father died when she was nine. Both justices attended Yale Law School, separated by 11 years.
It is unusual for Supreme Court justices to publicly criticize each other’s backgrounds, and the court’s liberals and conservatives have often made a point of emphasizing that their disagreements are not personal. In a 2018 CNN interview after Kavanaugh was confirmed by the Senate, Sotomayor referred to the nine justices as a “family.”
Asked about her relationships with the other eight justices during a speaking event at the University of Alabama last week, Sotomayor said “most of us actually like each other” because “I’m not thinking that how they vote defines them as people.”
“I daresay that with virtually all of them, I certainly have a civil relationship. And with many of them, I think I daresay that I have a friendship,” Sotomayor said.
But Sotomayor was sharply critical of the Supreme Court’s order on ICE stops at the time that it was issued. She wrote in a dissent joined by the two other liberal justices that the federal government — and Kavanaugh’s concurrence — had “all but declared that all Latinos, U. S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time.”
“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,” she wrote.