‘Mad As A Bag Of Cats’: John Kennedy Says Lib Justice Must Be Seething After Major SCOTUS Ruling

Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy said on Friday that Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent in a major decision shows she is upset.

Jackson issued a scathing dissent in response to the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision that barred district courts’ abilities to issue universal injunctions to block President Donald Trump’s policies. Kennedy, who celebrated the high court’s decision, said on “The Faulkner Focus” that Jackson’s ire toward the ruling is likely “a good thing for the American people.”

“The Supreme Court has turned the universal injunctions into fish food, as well it should have. There is no basis in statute, there’s no basis in Supreme Court precedent, there’s no basis in English common law for universal injunctions. Judges who just dislike what Congress or the president or any president has done, and good riddance. I’m very proud of the Supreme Court. It’s a very extensive ruling, you can tell it from Justice Jackson’s dissent. She is mad as a bag of cats and that’s probably a good thing for the American people,” Kennedy said.

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Trump issued the “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” executive order on his first day in office in January, which ends the inherent birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants or migrants on temporary visas. Three lower courts blocked the order through a universal injunction, leading the administration to appeal to the Supreme Court in April.

Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority’s opinion that the universal injunctions against Trump “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has granted to federal courts.” Jackson argued in her dissent that allowing a president to “violate the Constitution” is an “existential threat to the rule of law.”

“It is important to recognize that the Executive’s bid to vanquish so-called ‘universal injunctions’ is, at bottom, a request for this Court’s permission to engage in unlawful behavior. When the Government says ‘do not allow the lower courts to enjoin executive action universally as a remedy for unconstitutional conduct,’ what it is actually saying is that the Executive wants to continue doing something that a court has determined violates the Constitution—please allow this,” Jackson wrote.

“That is some solicitation. With its ruling today, the majority largely grants the Government’s wish. But, in my view, if this country is going to persist as a Nation of laws and not men, the Judiciary has no choice but to deny it,” she continued.

Barrett further said in her opinion that the court would “not dwell” on Jackson’s argument, which she argued is “at odds with more than two centuries worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself.” She argued that while the president has a duty to “follow the law,” the judicial branch lacks the “unbridled authority to enforce” that obligation.

Associated Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan also dissented in the decision.

During oral arguments on the case in May, Solicitor General John Saur stated that lower courts issued over 40 nationwide injunctions against Trump since he began his second term.