Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito believe the Supreme Court should take up a case that could create separate rules for minorities.
Issuing their dissent on the refusal to hear the U.S. v. Donte J. Carter, the pair blasted the potential dangers of treating people differently based on their race.
Carter’s firearm and theft-related convictions were vacated after the D.C. Court of Appeals found that police held him before having any reason to do so, despite him being in possession of a .40-caliber handgun that was allegedly stolen from an FBI agent’s vehicle. When police asked Carter if he was carrying a weapon, he lied and said he was not. Upon pulling his pants up, officers noted that he had a suspicious bulge in his pants, which appeared to take the “L” shape of a handgun, the same gun that would be later identified as the stolen pistol.
The court argued that “black Americans like [Carter] are ‘especially distrustful of law enforcement’” which causes them to be “‘less likely’ than other people ‘to terminate a police encounter’ due to skepticism that any attempt to exercise their constitutional rights will be respected.”
They further claimed that his race was a key component in the case, and that race in general plays a role in how people react to police encounters. Ultimately, the seizure was ruled unconstitutional because the officers involved were deemed to have not established reasonable suspicion.
“It is dangerous to allow an individual to be treated differently based on statistics, studies, or expert testimony that purports to show that members of the racial or ethnic group to which he belongs are more likely to act in a certain way than are members of other groups. Here, the special treatment helped the individual; in other situations, it will not,” Alito wrote.
“Under the test, officers will need to quickly assess a person’s race, and if officers and courts must craft special rules for black persons, what about dark-skinned Latinos, other Latinos, and members of other minority groups?” he asked. “We have said that our ’Constitution is color-blind.’ It ‘almost never’ allows government actors to treat persons differently based on their race.”
“And we have rejected the proposition that the Constitution permits an individual to be treated differently based on a ‘perception that members of the same racial group — regardless of their age, education, economic status, or the community in which they live — think alike,’” his argument continued, citing Shaw v. Reno.
