June 18, 2020

SCOTUS does the right thing, 5-4. We'll take it. Bless the Dreamers!

PETE WILLIAMS: Well, it's another big surprise.

The Supreme Court said the Trump administration wrongly tried to shut DACA down, so DACA is going to survive. The Trump administration could try again to shut it down, but that seems like it would be unlikely, something that the government would try to do during an election year.

So here is what happened. Remember, DACA, this is the program that says young people brought to the US by their illegal immigrant parents, can stay in the US if they meet certain conditions, they had to be under 16 and so forth. About 800,000 young people known as "Dreamers" have taken advantage of the program, set up by executive order by President Obama and no one ever disputed if President Trump wanted to, he could, by executive order, shut it down, but that's not what the Trump administration did.

Instead, the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, said in his opinion, DACA was illegally started, and so the Department of Homeland Security, based on that guidance, ordered that DACA should be shut down two years ago. A number of states and the University of California System sued, saying no, that can't be right, that when you have a program that many people depend on, another law says that you can't shut it down without going through a certain set of procedures, and today the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision I think, i'm just double-checking my notes here, uhm -- yes, 5-4 decision, said they went about it the wrong way.

Now, surprisingly, this decision was written by the Chief Justice, John Roberts. So we have another decision from a conservative Supreme Court with an outcome that would please I think the Democrats and the liberals.

So the issue here was, did the Trump administration go about shutting it down the wrong way, and the answer is yes. Now, obviously they could try again, the court says, but again, I think that's unlikely to happen during an election year. So bottom line, DACA continues. The young people that are in the program, they have to read-up every two years. We'll see what the next step for the Trump administration is. Back to you.

You can read the full decision here. (PDF)

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