Against the Stereotype

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson flanked by
husband Patrick and daughter Leila (Chron)

Do Supreme Court justices mostly make decisions that favor their own personal politics?

Partisans seem to think so (Catholic justices are anti-abortion, Democratic justices-of-color are in favor of quotas, etc.)

Indiana professor Leslie Lenkowski cites one prominent example of when justice-in-waiting Ketanji Brown Jackson went against the stereotype by ruling against the Obama Administration's targeting of a non-profit linked with Israel: [bold added]

The case involved Z Street, which provides information to the public on issues related to Zionism, Israel and the Middle East. At the end of 2009, it applied for tax exemption as a public charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code. Six months later, an IRS representative allegedly told Z Street a decision would be delayed because the agency had a special unit to examine requests from groups dealing with Israel to determine whether their views contradicted the Obama administration’s policies.

Z Street sued, and the case was assigned to Judge Jackson. In a 2014 ruling, Judge Jackson dismissed the IRS’s argument that its judgments about tax exemptions had immunity from judicial review. She accused the IRS of using procedural claims to block litigation of a constitutional issue.

After Z Street finally received its tax exemption, Judge Jackson approved a 2018 agreement in which the IRS expressed its “sincere apology” for the delay and acknowledged that its criteria for approving requests for tax-exemption shouldn’t include political beliefs—though the agency still denied it had applied a political test to Z Street’s application. In her conclusion of the case, Judge Jackson declared it was “wrong” to use the tax laws against any group “based solely on any lawful positions it espouses on any issue” or its “association with a particular political movement, position, or viewpoint.”

President Obama weaponizing the IRS against his opposition was not a fevered dream of Republicans but was confirmed by government audit:

the retrospective audit turned up almost 150 organizations that had been subjected to unusually intense IRS scrutiny, generally during the early years of the Obama administration. These organizations faced what the inspector general called “unnecessary questions” and longer-than-normal delays in processing their applications. This was on top of the nearly 300 groups that a separate 2013 audit found had received special IRS attention because of their association with the tea party.

Justices appointed by a Republican President, e.g., David Souter and Anthony Kennedy, regularly disappointed Republicans. Although few expect them, don't be surprised if Justice Jackson will have a few surprises during her term.