Alito appears testy during Sotomayor’s asylum dissent reading from the bench

Justice Samuel Alito responded tersely to Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Thursday morning after the liberal justice read her blistering dissent to his majority opinion in a case on asylum seekers.

The court’s 6-3 ruling along ideological lines opens the door for the Trump administration to turn around those seeking asylum in America before they reach U.S. soil.

Alito first briefly read the majority’s position.

As Sotomayor read her dissenting opinion from the bench, taking more time than her colleague, Alito leaned back in his chair and rocked back and forth, staring at the ceiling and at times appearing to close his eyes.

When Sotomayor criticized the majority opinion as “egregiously wrong,” Alito leaned forward in his chair, propped his chin in his hands and stared up at the ceiling.

When Sotomayor commented about the majority opinion’s reference to the language of “arrival” in the context of immigration and used the example of landing at Reagan Washington National Airport, Alito briefly set his gaze on Sotomayor.

After she concluded, Alito softly cleared his throat before issuing a rare off-the-cuff response to a dissent. The conservative justice appeared testy as he said that there was much more that he “would have added” if he’d known that Sotomayor would read her dissent aloud in full.

It is not regular practice for justices to read dissenting opinions from the bench, but it is done occasionally to signal strong opposition to the majority’s ruling.

The court’s other conservative justices displayed little reaction to Sotomayor, with Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas staring down at their papers for most of her reading. Justice Brett Kavanaugh stared directly at Sotomayor throughout her entire speech from the bench.

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Amy Coney Barrett

Brett Kavanaugh

Clarence Thomas

Neil Gorsuch

Samuel Alito

Sonia Sotomayor

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