Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-147_g31h.pdf
Page Number: 39.0

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

15 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
Opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J. 

A 
Two  Terms  ago,  this  Court  reiterated  and  reaffirmed 
Ziglar’s two-step test for assessing whether a claim may be
brought as a Bivens action.  See Hernández, 589 U. S., at 
___ (slip op., at 7) (“When asked to extend Bivens, we en-
gage  in  a  two-step  inquiry”).  Today,  however,  the  Court
pays  lip  service  to  the  test  set  out  in  our  precedents,  but 
effectively  replaces  it  with  a  new  single-step  inquiry  de-
signed to constrict Bivens.  Ante, at 7 (acknowledging this
Court’s  previous  “two  ste[p]”  standard  but  insisting  that 
“those  steps  often  resolve  to  a  single  question:  whether
there is any reason to think that Congress might be better
equipped to create a damages remedy”); ante, at 8 (positing
that “[t]he newness of [some] ‘new context[s]’ should alone
require  dismissal”  (some  internal  quotation  marks  omit-
ted)).  The  Court  goes  so  far  as  to  announce  that  “[t]he 
Bivens  inquiry  does  not  invite  federal  courts  to  inde-
pendently assess the costs and benefits of implying a cause
of  action,”  ante,  at  11;  instead,  courts  must  “only”  decide 
“whether  there  is  any  rational  reason  (even  one)  to  think 
that Congress is better suited to ‘weigh the costs and bene-
fits of allowing a damages action to proceed,’ ” ibid. (quoting 
Ziglar, 582 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 12)). 

That  approach  contrasts  starkly  with  the  standard  the
Court announced in Ziglar and applied in Hernández.  This 
Court  regularly  has  considered  whether  courts  are  “well 
suited . . . to consider and weigh  the costs and benefits of
allowing a damages action to proceed,” Ziglar, 582 U. S., at 
___ (slip op., at 12), and have never held that such weighing 
is categorically impermissible, contrary to the Court’s anal-
ysis today.  See also Wilkie, 551 U. S., at 554 (noting that 
the Bivens inquiry asks courts to “weig[h] reasons for and 
against the creation of a new cause of action”).

The Court justifies its innovations by selectively quoting
our precedents and presenting its newly announced stand-