Justice Sotomayor Told a Huge Whopper About Kids and COVID

The liberal wing of the Supreme Court embarrassed itself Friday with a slew of false claims about COVID-19 during oral arguments over Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates.

For example, Justice Stephen Breyer claimed hospitals are at capacity because of unvaccinated Americans with COVID. This is false.

But perhaps the most ridiculous false claim from a Supreme Court justice came from  Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who falsely claimed that 100,000 children are in “serious condition” from COVID.

“We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators. We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators,” Sotomayor claimed

This false claim can be easily fact-checked thanks to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, which says that the current number of confirmed pediatric hospitalizations with COVID in the United States is 3,342.

Those are hospitalizations with COVID, not from COVID.

How exactly did Sotomayor get it so wrong? How can a Supreme Court justice so irresponsibly spread misinformation? Further, why should the hospitalization rate matter at all? The issue before the court is not the severity of the disease; it’s the constitutionality of Biden’s mandates.

BY MATT MARGOLIS JAN 07, 2022 4:18 PM ET