In a definitive 8-1 ruling, the US Supreme Court dismissed the challenge to the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement policy that had been raised by the states of Texas and Louisiana. The court ruled that the states did not have standing to challenge the policy for failing to adhere to Federal law. CNN has the details:
The ruling is a major victory for President Joe Biden and the White House, who have consistently argued the need to prioritize who they detain and deport given limited resources. By ruling against the states, the court tightened the rules concerning when states may challenge federal policies with which they disagree.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion.
“In Sum, the States have brought an extraordinarily unusual lawsuit,” Kavanaugh wrote, in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “They want a federal court to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policies so as to make more arrests. Federal courts have not traditionally entertained that kind of lawsuit; indeed, the States cite no precedent for a lawsuit like this.”
Justices Gorsuch, Thomas, and Coney Barrett concurred in the ruling, but not on the details. They found that the states lacked standing not because of “the lack of a “judicially cognizable” interest or injury” but because their suit lack “redressability”, based on law passed by Congress that limits what courts can do to order enforcement of immigration law specifically. Basically, they rejected the idea that states don’t have standing in the first place to seek enforcement of Federal law when they can’t show actual injury, but substituted a much more limited objection that even if they can, it doesn’t matter because there is no remedy available that could address that injury.
With a five member majority joining Kavanaugh in his findings, this is a ruling with deep implications. Not only is Biden’s Department of Homeland Security free to prioritize immigration enforcement as they see fit (including continuing DACA) but it also makes it much harder for states to challenge federal policies on the enforcement of Federal laws. How this will play out in the long run is unknown, but it does mean that states cannot simply sue to force the executive branch to perform enforcement actions that do not conform to stated policy. This can be both good and bad, in the long run.
In the enforcement of Federal law, it is possible that many good things can be fostered by this decision. For instance, states are now blocked from trying to have Federal drug laws enforced in states where marijuana has been legalized, on the grounds that this is harming the states which have not pursued legalization. How ever, this ruling could also prevent states from suing to have environmental laws enforced on other states, even when this could be causing environmental problems in the state that files, though this is a less sure outcome of this ruling, given that the filing state could point to actual and demonstrable harm.
So, we have a win for current immigration policy and no return to the more extreme policies that Texas and Louisiana had sought to have enforced. But we also have a curtailment of a power that states can use for both bad and good reasons. Only the future will show whether this will prove to be an overall good or bad decision in the long run.