By David G. Savage
By David G. Savage
Los Angeles Times
In a striking rebuke to President Trump, the Supreme Court Thursday rejected his plan to repeal the popular Obama-era order that protected so-called Dreamers, the nearly 800,000 young immigrants who were brought to this country illegally as children.
Led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the court called the decision to cancel the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, as arbitrary and not justified. The program allows these young people to register with the government, and if they have clean records, to obtain a work permit. At least 27,000 of these DACA recipients are employed as healthcare workers.
Trump had been the confident that high court with its majority of Republican appointees would rule in his favor and say the chief executive had the power to “unwind” the policy.
The decision follows several other defeats this week for Trump. On Monday the court rejected the Trump administration’s position that a 1964 civil rights law should not protect LGBTQ workers from discrimination, and separately it sided with California in a legal battle over so-called sanctuary laws.
The DACA case was perhaps the year’s biggest immigration dispute at the high court.
Today’s decision is similar to last year’s ruling that blocked Trump’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
On Monday, Roberts spoke for the same 5-4 majority, and his opinion follows the same reasoning. The chief justice said Trump’s Homeland Security officials did not put forth a valid reason for revoking the DACA program, just as he said it did not provide a valid reason for adding the citizenship question.
