Harry Litman - The Fourth Amendment in the Shadows

The Supreme Court’s latest venture into the shadow docket—one paragraph dissolving a district court order enjoining a flagrant series of Fourth Amendment violations—shows just how casually this majority is setting aside constitutional rights that impede Trump’s authoritarian agenda.

The case, Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, grew out of the Administration’s “Operation At Large,” a month-long sweep across Los Angeles and surrounding counties. Federal officials touted it as the most intensive enforcement action in years. The result was nearly 2,800 arrests in a matter of weeks, many from raids at Home Depots, car washes, bus stops, farms, and parks. Agents, often masked and armed, swept up people on the flimsiest of grounds.

The plaintiffs—day laborers and community members—brought forward a mountain of unrebutted evidence that federal agents were repeatedly violating governing law on nvestigative stops. Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) in July, finding “ample evidence” that agents were making stops based solely on four factors: (1) apparent race or ethnicity; (2) speaking Spanish or accented English; (3) presence at certain locations like day-labor pickup sites, car washes, or bus stops; and (4) the type of work, such as day labor, landscaping, or construction.

In plain English, the government was targeting people for looking Latino, speaking Spanish, and seeking work in places where day laborers often gather. That is precisely what the Fourth Amendment forbids—or so it seemed under current law. The “particularized suspicion” requirement means there must be facts distinguishing the person being stopped from the many innocent people who share those traits.

https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/the-fourth-amendment-in-the-shadows