Samuel Alito keeps getting his way. So why does he seem so unhappy?

By Joan Biskupic, CNN Chief Supreme Court Analyst

(CNN) — Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has a remarkable record of transforming his old dissenting opinions into the new majority view and setting the direction of the law in America.

Yet the more he wins, the testier he gets.

His most obvious coup came with his 2022 opinion reversing abortion rights. This month’s decision siding with Republicans in the Texas redistricting fight offered a new reminder that Alito in 2024 seized the majority in claims of racial gerrymanders – after being on the losing side a few years earlier.

Still, even on the dominant side of the court, Alito is easily irritated. He lodged a separate, last-minute broadside against liberal dissenters in the Texas dispute over a map alleged to discriminate against Black and Latino voters.

Alito’s aggravation is regularly on display in the courtroom, too.

In a major campaign finance case this month, he reached back nearly 16 years to cite a case in which he voted to reverse precedent on the regulation of corporate money in elections: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. He was in the majority but still feels wronged.

Alito suddenly brought up “our much maligned, I think unfairly maligned, decision in Citizens United.” The decision struck down certain federal limits on corporate and labor union political spending as a violation of the First Amendment.

Alito’s reference to the case could not help but recall his televised reaction at the 2010 State of the Union address after then-President Barack Obama criticized, with some exaggeration, the opinion, saying it “reversed a century of law” and would open the “floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.” Alito mouthed “not true” at the hyperbole, and the moment captured on camera went viral.

In the courtroom, even the little things can visibly irk Alito. He often grimaces and rolls his eyes. During a death-penalty dispute this month, Alito began offering a hypothetical example to the lawyer at the lectern. The lawyer responded, “may I just finish my sentence?” and then kept talking.

When Alito was able to resume, he laid bare his impatience, saying, “On that hypothetical, three or four sentences later ….”

Other justices laughed. They appear accustomed to his unguarded irritability.

This is the paradoxical byproduct of a justice who has become one of the most consequential members of the bench.

From the start of his high court tenure, 20 years ago this January, Alito made the difference as he succeeded centrist Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and began casting the decisive conservative vote in a series of cases. As the years wore on, Alito authored many closely fought decisions on abortion, voting rights and religion.

His views could shape decisions in pending cases this session on transgender rights, religious freedom and executive power.

In 2026, Alito will also likely be the most-watched justice for anyone wondering if President Donald Trump will soon get another vacancy to fill. Trump had three appointments to the nine-member bench in his first term.

Alito, 75, and Clarence Thomas, 77, are the eldest justices. Thomas, who was appointed in 1991 at the young age of 43 and is now the fifth-longest serving justice in US history, has suggested that he has no intention of retiring while he is healthy.

Alito, on the other hand, has pondered a possible retirement, according to people close to him. But he has not signaled any eagerness to leave.

Trump has said he’d like Alito to stay. Alito has become perhaps Trump’s strongest defender on the high court, not just by his votes but with scalding opinions backing Trump initiatives when other conservatives turn away.

When the high-court majority temporarily prevented the administration last April from deporting a group of Venezuelan men in custody in Texas, Alito was incensed.

In sum,” he wrote, “literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party (the Trump administration), within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order.”

Alito also authored the lead dissent last week when the majority prevented the Trump administration from deploying the National Guard to Chicago.

A record of reversing dissents

Much of Alito’s trajectory through his two decades has involved reversing precedent, most notably the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned nearly a half century of precedent backing the constitutional right to an abortion.

This month, when the Supreme Court revived a Texas congressional map, the majority relied on an Alito opinion in a South Carolina case in 2024 that represented a turnaround from his dissent in a 2017 North Carolina case.

In dispute have been claims from civil-rights groups that a state legislature has drawn a congressional map along unconstitutional racial lines. It’s a subject intensified by Trump’s pressure on legislatures to engage in off-cycle redistricting to try to shore up the slim Republican advantage in the US House of Representatives.

Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal, wrote for the majority in the 2017 Cooper v. Harris case that struck down two North Carolina congressional districts that civil rights groups said had relied excessively on voters’ race. The decision enhanced the opportunity to challenge racial gerrymanders in court.

“(T)he sorting of voters on the grounds of their race remains suspect even if race is meant to function as a proxy for other (including political) characteristics,” she wrote.

But in 2024, a cemented conservative supermajority rejected a challenge to a South Carolina district that a lower court panel had caused the “bleaching” of Black voters from the district. Writing for the majority, Alito instituted a new test that required greater deference to state legislators and a higher burden for groups challenging the maps as discriminatory.

State legislatures should be presumed to operate in good faith, Alito said in Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP.

“When a federal court finds that race drove a legislature’s districting decisions, it is declaring that the legislature engaged in ‘offensive and demeaning’ conduct that ‘bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid,’” he wrote. “We should not be quick to hurl such accusations at the political branches.”

Kagan bristled at the turnabout: “(T)he majority is intent on changing the usual rules when it comes to addressing racial-gerrymandering claims. To be fair, we have seen all this once before – except that it was in dissent.”

In the Texas case, conservative majority said the lower court that invalidated the map had “failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith.” That unsigned opinion from the majority in Abbott v. LULAC might have been the end of it. But then Alito saw what Kagan, joined by two other liberal dissenters, had drafted in response.

She criticized the majority for brushing aside the trial court’s 160-page decision, which followed a nine-day hearing involving nearly two dozen witnesses and thousands of exhibits. “Today’s order disrespects the work of a District Court that did everything one could ask to carry out its charge – that put aside every consideration except getting the issue before it right. And today’s order disserves the millions of Texans whom the District Court found were assigned to their new districts based on their race.”

Such criticism from a dissenting justice can, of course, irk those in the majority. But while some justices find it best simply to take the win, Alito has trouble shaking off criticism from dissenters or in the public sphere.

He fired back with a separate opinion taking issue with Kagan’s reasoning but added, “I will not delay the Court’s order by writing a detailed response to each of the dissent’s arguments.”

Recoiling at public scrutiny

Alito, reserved by nature, tried to keep a relatively low profile after he was confirmed in January 2006. After the State of the Union episode that made headlines, he has not returned for any other presidential speech before Congress.

Media scrutiny plainly sticks in his craw.

When he learned that ProPublica was about to report on a trip he’d taken with hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer that raised ethical questions, Alito tried to strike first with an op-ed column in the Wall Street Journal downplaying the relationship.

After the New York Times reported on controversial political flags flown at his family properties and Democrats pressed for Alito’s recusal in cases tied to 2020 election protests, Alito attributed the flags to his wife, Martha-Ann. “My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not.”

Alito, who declined a CNN request for an interview, believes the justices deserve greater public regard. In a 2023 interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said, “I marvel at all the nonsense that has been written about me in the last year.”

He said judges tend to leave it to “the organized bar” and others to defend them. “But that’s just not happening,” Alito added. “And so at a certain point I’ve said to myself, nobody else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself.”

Win or lose, Alito exudes a sense of aggrievement.

The mantle of victimization has perplexed some law clerks from earlier sessions who considered him easy-going. The justices appear to accept his crankiness. That was evident in an episode two years ago, when a hypothetical scenario Alito offered to a lawyer at the lectern seemed particularly revealing.

“Let’s say I’m complaining about my workplace. It’s cold. It’s set at 63 degrees. There isn’t any coffee machine. The boss is unfriendly. All my co-workers are obnoxious.”

Other justices began chuckling at the scenario that seemed to be cutting close to home, prompting Alito to declare dryly: “Any resemblance to any living character is purely, purely accidental.”

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