On Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor publicly expressed regret for her “inappropriate” comments directed at Justice Brett Kavanaugh. These remarks were made in response to Kavanaugh’s vote last year, which permitted the Trump administration to employ aggressive immigration enforcement tactics that critics labeled as racial profiling.

During a recent event at the University of Kansas School of Law, Sotomayor commented on Kavanaugh’s stance in the immigration case, referring to his assertion that certain detentions were merely “temporary stops.” She remarked, “This is from a man whose parents were professionals and probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.”

While the majority of the Court did not provide a formal rationale for their decision to lift a restraining order on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) strategy targeting suspected unauthorized immigrants in California, Kavanaugh articulated his belief that “apparent ethnicity” could serve as a “relevant factor” in assessing probable cause for detaining an individual. He also expressed the expectation that federal law enforcement stops to ascertain a person’s legal status would be both “temporary” and reasonable.

Justice Sotomayor, along with Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the Court’s ruling. In her dissenting opinion, she stated, “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

Sotomayor’s unusually personal critique of Kavanaugh garnered considerable attention within legal circles, prompting some of Kavanaugh’s supporters to call for a retraction. In a statement released by the Court on Wednesday, Sotomayor acknowledged her “regret” for her earlier comments.