WhatFinger

They didn't rule against his executive action. They merely decided to let the case take the usual legal course

SCOTUS rebuke of Trump on DACA is not what the media are telling you it is

By Dan Calabrese ——--February 27, 2018

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SCOTUS rebuke of Trump on DACA is not what the media are telling you it is As usual, the media are pretty excited about anything they can portray as a rebuke of the Trump Administration or its policies. They've had a pretty good time with low-level, liberal federal judges striking down perfectly legal executive orders, particularly on immigration, but those lower-court rulings usually get overturned by the Supreme Court because they're completely unconstitutional and without any legal basis. They're just liberal judges smacking the president because they want to. So the media thought they really had something yesterday when the Supreme Court said no to a Trump Administration request that it step in and immediately settle the latest legal challenge to Trump's discarding of DACA. Gleeful headlines informed us that SCOTUS had rebuked Trump and refused to restore his order to end DACA protection for people who were brought here illegally as children.
The only problem is that is not what SCOTUS actually did:
Two district court judges have issued a nationwide preliminary injunction on the Trump Administration’s plan to end President Obama’s Deferred Action for Children Arrivals (DACA) program, now in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Justice Department in a rare move asked the Supreme Court to take the cases ahead of appellate rulings. The Justices said no, though the Administration can appeal after the normal circuit protocol. The Court added with some sharpness that it is “assumed that the Court of Appeals will proceed expeditiously to decide this case,” and let’s hope it does. The Trump Administration has a strong legal case. Even President Obama said he lacked the authority to issue work permits before he entered the “I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone” imperial phase of his Presidency. He then justified DACA as prosecutorial discretion, which is typically a judgment call for individual cases, not for issuing work permits to entire classes of people. The practical effect of the Court’s deferral is that DACA permits will continue to be renewed for now, despite President Trump’s March deadline for when legal protections would begin to expire. This will be a welcome if temporary relief to tens of thousands of young adults who came out of the shadows in good faith, only to now have to fear deportation to a foreign country they do not know.
The Supremes did not uphold the lower-court ruling. They simply ruled that there was no reason the case should skip the Appeals Court level before going to the Supreme Court. In other words, they chose to make no ruling at all unless and until the Appeals Court has its say and then there is a further appeal to that ruling. This is the normal process such a case would follow. You don't have to agree with the lower-court ruling to believe the usual appeals process should be followed, and that's all SCOTUS did here. Indeed, it would have been outside the norm for SCOTUS to grant the administration's request, although you can see why the White House would be getting tired of these never-ending legal delays to its policy decisions, and would want the matter settled once and for all. The media are not too interested in those nuances, though. They just want you to see "Supreme Court rebukes Trump" headlines, which is why they're providing them in abundance. I'd say chances are that the Supremes ultimately uphold Trump's authority to set aside DACA, and I'd be willing to bet that when that happens, the media won't give it as much attention as the decision that so excited them yesterday.

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Dan Calabrese——

Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

Follow all of Dan’s work, including his series of Christian spiritual warfare novels, by liking his page on Facebook.

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