Did the dissent in a June 2025 U.S. Supreme Court opinion mention a question about breakfast? No, that's not true: What appeared to be a screenshot of an excerpt from the dissent in one of the opinions issued on June 27 was, in fact, no more than a joke. The paragraph alluded to a long-standing internet meme called "The Breakfast Question", which is sometimes used as a way to mock someone's perceived lack of intelligence.
The fake excerpt appeared in a widely-shared June 27, 2025, post on X (archived here). The caption of the post read "This dissent is completely unreal" and the text in the embedded screenshot read:
I dissent with unyielding indignation from the majority's acquiescence to the Petitioner's counsel's outrageous inquiry into my morning repast during oral argument, a question -- "How would Your Honor feel if you didn't have breakfast this morning?" -- that is wholly devoid of legal relevance and constitutes an egregious affront to the dignity of this Court. Such an impertinent question, lacking any nexus to the multitudinous constitutional issues before us threatens to erode the independence of this tribunal by subjecting Justices to trivial interrogatories better suited to a morning talk show than a court of law. In fact, I had already stated that I had eaten a full breakfast. I would hold that such questions do nothing to serve our democracy, and I admonish all litigants to refrain from such inquiries, on pain of sanctions, preserving the sanctity of this Court's proceedings from the specter of any breakfast-related frivolity.
This is what it looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot)
The excerpt was fake, and never formed part of the dissent in any Supreme Court opinion issued on June 27, 2025.
Rather, it was a reference to an old internet meme known as "The Breakfast Question", which is sometimes used to mock a subject's perceived lack of intelligence. The website KnowYourMeme.com describes it as follows:
The Breakfast Question or How Would You Have Felt If You Hadn't Eaten Breakfast? is a bait question and a counterfactual conditional that references a 4chan story of a grad student who allegedly performed IQ research on convicts at San Quentin State Prison. During the research, individuals with low IQ struggled to simulate the hypothetical situation in their minds, instead answering that they did have breakfast. Online, the question has been used in internet arguments as a conspicuous way to indicate that one's opponent is unintelligent, while the posts have often been referenced in memes.
By pretending that the dissenting justice had been asked "How would Your Honor feel if you didn't have breakfast this morning?" and then having the dissenting judge make a point of writing "In fact, I had already stated that I had eaten a full breakfast", the joke was therefore intended to mock the intelligence of the dissenting judge.
