In September, the Supreme Court rendered obsolete the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on suspicionless seizures by the police. When the court stayed the district court’s decision in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, it green-lighted an era of policing in which people can be stopped and seized for little more than how they look, the job they work or the language they speak.

Because the decision was issued on the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket,” the justices’ reasoning is unknown. All we have is Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s solo concurrence defending law enforcement’s use of race and ethnicity as a factor in deciding whom to police, while at the same time playing down the risk that comes with every stop — prolonged detention, wanton violence, wrongful deportation and sometimes even death.

As Justice So

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