In the fall of 2017, the Trump administration announced that it was ending DACA, an Obama-era federal program that protects over 649,000,000 undocumented immigrants in the United States. Not long after the announcement, a series of protests, lawsuits, and federal court decisions that opposed the administration’s ruling followed — and eventually, this led to the case falling at the hands of the Supreme Court in November 2019.
Today, after three years of uncertainty and as DACA recipients rallied outside the Supreme Court with masks and signs, the awaited hearing came as a win for undocumented migrants across the nation: the country’s highest court ruled 5-4 that the Trump administration violated federal law when it ended the program.
DACA will then continue — but that is, at least for now.
The court’s decision was authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, who joined the court’s four liberal justices — Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Elena Kagan, and Justice Stepehen Breyer — and wrote that the Trump administration’s termination of DACA was “arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedures Act.” Chief Roberts stated that the administration has the power to end the program, but that the problem in this case is how the administration did it: the reason behind the ruling and the legal processes that administration failed to follow.
“The dispute before the Court is not whether DHS may rescind DACA. All parties agree that it may. The dispute is instead primarily about the procedure the agency followed in doing so.”
In a deeply divided Supreme Court, this was a similar ruling as that of last year, when the Trump administration wanted to add a question of citizenship to the 2020 census. In that case too, Justice Roberts joined the four liberal justices in ruling that the administration had failed to provide an adequate reason for its actions. As emphasized by Chief Roberts, this means that the Trump administration can end DACA in the future if it succeeds in justifying its reasoning and in following procedures.
Today’s ruling is then just a temporary relief for DREAMers, or DACA recipients.
Beyond the argument of the Trump administration’s reasoning behind its decision, the argument that the ending of the program was a violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause because of animus against Hispanics was also debated. But only Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the conclusion that there was no racial animus in the administration’s original move. If the court ruled that the clause had been violated, DACA would have then been more protected from a future attack by the administration.
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the main dissent, in which he said the DACA program was unlawful from the moment President Barack Obama created it in 2012. President Trump, who did not respond to the decision immediately, later retweeted a quote from Justice Thomas’ dissent, where the ruling is called “an effort to avoid a politically controversial but legally correct decision.”
President Trump later tweeted “Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?.” In another tweet, he wrote “Vote Trump 2020!”
These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020
Today’s decision is the second time this week that the Supreme Court takes a stance against the Trump administration, with the court’s 6-3 ruling on Monday in favor of an a LGBT non-discrimination act, after the administration had erased health care protections for Transgender patients. Amid reelection campaigns, today’s ruling is yet a major blow to the Trump administration from the Supreme Court.
Former President Barack Obama, who created DACA under an executive order, shared his reaction to the ruling through Twitter too, expressing his feelings on the news and saying the decision was a win for everyone.
“We may look different and come from everywhere, but what makes us American are our shared ideals.”
