Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/20-5904_i4dk.pdf
Page Number: 11

Cite as:  593 U. S. ____ (2021) 

1 

Opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J. 

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 

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No. 20– 5904 
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TARAHRICK TERRY, PETITIONER v. UNITED STATES 

ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF 
APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT 

[June 14, 2021]

 JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, concurring in part and concurring 

in the judgment. 

I agree with the Court’s interpretation of the First Step
Act, join Part II of its opinion, and concur in the judgment.1 

—————— 

1 I do not join Part I of the Court’s opinion because it includes an un-
necessary, incomplete, and sanitized history of the 100-to-1 ratio.  The 
full  history  is  far  less  benign.  The  Court,  ante,  at  2,  n. 2,  emphasizes 
Black  leaders’  support  for  “tough-on-crime”  policies,  but  ignores  that 
these  leaders  “also  called  for  federal  investment  in  longer-term,  root-
cause solutions  such as welfare, education, and job training programs.” 
J. Forman, Locking Up Our Own 157 (2017) (Forman).  But “[t]he help 
never arrived,” leaving Black communities with “just the tough-on-crime 
laws”  and  little  else.  Id.,  at  12.   Nor  does  the  Court  mention  that  the 
“ ‘careful deliberative practices of the Congress were set aside’ ” for the 
1986  omnibus  crime  bill  that  included  the  100-to-1  ratio,  as  part  of  a 
“rush  to  pass  dramatic  drug  legislation  before  the  midterm  elections.” 
Sklansky, Cocaine, Race, and Equal Protection, 47 Stan. L. Rev. 1283, 
1294, and n. 55 (1996) (Sklansky).  Indeed, the “legislative history offers 
no explanation for the selection of a ratio of 100:1,” save that it “was the 
highest ratio proposed.”  Id., at 1297.  There is, by contrast, an extensive 
record of race-based myths about crack cocaine that the media “branded 
onto the public mind and the minds of legislators,” United States v. Clary, 
846 F. Supp. 768, 783 (ED Mo. 1994), and that appear in the Congres-
sional  Record,  see  Sklansky  1291–1295,  and  nn.  49–60.    Most  egre-
giously,  the  Court  barely  references  the  ratio’s  real-world  impact  (dis-
cussed infra, at 3–4), and disregards the fact that, “as the racial effects 
of mandatory minimums and the crack/cocaine disparity became appar-
ent, the [Congressional Black Caucus] came together in unanimous and 
increasingly vocal opposition to the law.”  Forman 205.  Bills to mitigate