Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of DACA, against the wishes of the Trump administration. Justice Roberts has become a wild card on the Court. He was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2005 and is considered a conservative, but has voted with the liberal bloc on several important decisions, including this one. Protecting the “Dreamers” has been a priority for the Democratic Party.
From the Los Angeles Times:
WASHINGTON — 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.
The Obama administration announced the policy in 2012 and said the government had no interest in arresting and deporting young people who were working in this country, contributing to their communities and obeying the laws. The order allowed them to register with the government, and if they had a clean record, to obtain a work permit.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is great news for so many young people including many of my former ELL students. It is also good news for the economy as these young workers can attend school, work and pay taxes. They do not have to hide in the shadows in fear of being sent back to a country that many of them do not even remember. Many of these young DACA students work in healthcare, social services and education as well as skilled trades.
YAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!
This. Is. So. Awesome.
Isn’t it strange that we live under a maladministration so twisted that this simple decency becomes a cause for jubilation. But here we are. Thank you, Supremes!!!!
Amazing. I breathe a sigh of relief for all the Dreamer kids I taught over the years.
Don’t breathe too deeply yet. This so-called administration will continue to do what it can to make lives as difficult as possible for them. For example, don’t expect the Dept. of Education to anything differently. If anything, they and other agencies will drag out enforcement–and hinder it–at every turn. Today was a positive step forward, but it’s the second step of a many thousand step journey with many seen and unseen roadblocks ahead.
Also meant to add, for you and Bob above, the importance Diane stresses on making sure the Idiot gets no more SCOTUS nominees. There are enough judges out there who desperately want to give standing to another case that would overturn this one.
Absolutely. Trump’s judicial nominees have been knuckle-draggers. So I say no more Supreme Court Justices or Circuit Court nominees.
Sad to say but if Ruth Bader Ginsberg were to suddenly die, Mitch McConnell would ram through a fully vetted rightwing zealot in 24 hours. I am very disappointed that RBG did not have the good sense to retire in the middle of Obama’s second term so her seat could be filled by someone thirty years younger. She was 80 and it was time. Now we have to pray that she survives until Jan 2021 if we want to prevent a third Trump justice.
At the same Trump is working to put more impediments in the way of those seeking asylum. He is also trying to streamline the process to expedite the removal of asylum seekers. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/new-trump-admin-proposal-would-make-it-harder-immigrants-claim-n1229596
YAY
I agree with Greg and Diane’s astute take on RBG. Pray for her health and a defeat of T and his Republican cronies.
After Bolton’s comments, if Trump’s support doesn’t lessen, the conclusion has to be that his base doesn’t care about the country. They want to preserve their white privilege even as they lose financial benefit from it, at the hands of men like McConnell and Trump.
I agree. Bolton is a very conservative Republican. It was outrageous that he refused to testify when he was invited by the House during the impeachment hearings. What he wrote about Trump showed that Trump is stupid (he thinks Finland is part of Russia), willing to sell out our democracy (asking China to help him get re-elected by buying agricultural products from the U.S.), and more vile actions.
It’s not Trump’s base that has us in the fix we’re in. It’s elected members of the GOP, who have refused to hold that petulant child to account, while they line their pockets and load our courts.
Regardless of recent verdicts that came as a surprise, SCOTUS, as well as top military command and top presidential advisors should reflect the nation’s diversity of religious belief or absence thereof. Jefferson’s admonitions coupled with the increased politicking of the religious, e.g. Jerry Falwell Jr., Knights of Columbus, and state Catholic Conferences makes sensitivity to the issue imperative.
Recognizing that there is diversity within a faith, having Mattis, Bolton, John Kelly, Anthony Tata, Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekalow from just two of the country’s religions is probably not ideal. Faiths that prohibit women from top leadership roles are unlikely to be a good training ground for acknowledgement of women’s rights.
Justice Sotomayor unfortunately was the only member of the Court to press for protections for DACA recipients under an Equal Protection clause; the other eight members did not. This has the effect of raising the bar quite high for lawsuits claiming discrimination. Sotomayor cited Trump’s ” impermissable discriminatory animus.”
The other jugdes who joined with Sotomayor found on far more narrow grounds that the recission of DACA was wrong: a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.
In her memoir, My Beloved World, Sotomayor recounts an incident when she and her mother are shopping for a coat for Sonia to take with her to college. The saleswoman is snooty and unhelpful as her mother explains their quest, but then asks, “What college are you going to?” Hearing that it’s Princeton, the saleswoman grows quite affable and heads to the stockroom. Sotomayor’s mother is rather dumbfounded, “M’ija, that school of yours must be something special.”
Sotomayor knows animus.
I agree. The decision is wimpy, and political. Sends exec back to the drawing board 5 mos before election, essentially leaving this up to the electorate. All 3 branches of govt just keep tossing this hot potato around. The last comprehensive immigration reform was passed in 1986, but didn’t deal with the meat of the issue, low-skilled Mexicans looking to work here, so failed. A promising fix in the works in 2001 was tabled due to 9/11. Three more attempts have passed House or Senate but failed to get full consensus.
Good analysis, and some hope: