The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to reinstate President Joe Biden’s immigration policies that were blocked by a Texas judge, CNN reports.
A majority of justices declined to freeze the lower court order, with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett and liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor dissenting.
The court agreed to hear arguments on the merits of the case in December but said it would not intervene in the Texas case.
The case marked Jackson’s first vote since she was sworn in on June 30.
Though the court is not in formal session until the fall, Jackson will vote on emergency applications that the court receives over the summer.
Jackson is set for a formal investiture in the fall.
Details:
A federal judge in Texas blocked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ guidance on immigration arrests.
DHS limited arrests of noncitizens to those that pose a national security or public safety threat and called for an assessment of the “totality of facts and circumstances.” Under Trump, simply being in the U.S. illegally was grounds for arrest and deportation.
The lower court opinion came in response to a lawsuit from Texas and Louisiana.
The two states argued that the policy would result in higher costs for the states and increase the number of criminal noncitizens.
Biden administration slams decision:
The lower court opinion is "thwarting the Secretary's direction of the Department he leads and disrupting DHS's efforts to focus its limited resources on the noncitizens who pose the gravest threat to national security, public safety, and the integrity of our Nation's borders," Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in court papers.
"For most of our nation's history, a suit like this would have been unheard of," she wrote, because "courts did not allow States to sue the federal government based on the indirect, downstream effects federal policies."
