Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas expressed their dissent on Monday regarding the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear a case, emphasizing that it implies police should have distinct rules for racial minorities.
Alito, speaking for both justices, warned against allowing individuals to be treated differently based on data suggesting that certain racial or ethnic groups behave a certain way. “Special treatment may have benefitted the individual in this instance, but not in others,” he remarked.
The case in question, United States v. Donte J. Carter, involved the vacating of a Black man’s convictions related to firearms possession and theft after the D.C. Court of Appeals determined he was arrested without reasonable suspicion. Officers had found a .40-caliber handgun in Carter’s pants, allegedly stolen from an FBI agent’s vehicle.
The D.C. court noted that Black Americans, including Carter, are generally “particularly distrustful of law enforcement” and may be less likely to disengage from police encounters because of skepticism regarding whether their constitutional rights would be upheld.
Alito and Thomas argued that the D.C. ruling effectively mandates that law enforcement treat individuals differently based on race, which contradicts Supreme Court precedents.
“This approach forces police to rapidly assess a person’s race. If law enforcement and the courts must adopt unique rules for Black individuals, what happens to dark-skinned Latinos, other Latinos, and those from other minority backgrounds?” Alito remarked. He further stated, “The Constitution is supposed to be colorblind and rarely allows different treatment based on race.”
While referencing various cases to bolster his stance, Alito pointed out that the Constitution does not allow for distinct treatment based on the notion that individuals of the same race think uniformly across diverse backgrounds.
The D.C. court’s reasoning suggested that police officers believed all Black people reacted similarly to law enforcement, prompting them to assume Carter wouldn’t feel comfortable asserting his rights in their presence.
Initially, Carter, whom Alito acknowledged for his cooperation, misinformed an officer by denying he had a weapon. Following this, police requested him to raise his pants, revealing a suspicious bulge later identified as the stolen handgun.
