Chief Justice John Roberts strikes again. In a 5–4 judgment in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, the Supreme Court held…
Chief Justice John Roberts strikes again.
In a 5–4 judgment in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, the Supreme Court held that the Trump administration’s rollback of the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the statute that sets the standard of review for federal agency action.
Put aside for a moment the dubious notion that the APA even governs this case. If something seems fishy about why a court would block an incumbent administration’s executive action on immigration that simply rescinds similar action on the same issue by a prior administration, you’re on to what is in fact a brazen double standard.
Recall that President Obama had implemented DACA by executive action, disregarding the law governing hundreds of thousands of people who are in this country illegally in an attempt to go around Congress after it failed to pass the legislation he wanted.
By implementing DACA, Obama had flip-flopped from his past statement that he could not go around Congress: “I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed, and Congress right now has not changed what I consider to be a broken immigration system.
