Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California
 | |
| Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California | |
| Term: 2019 | |
| Important Dates | |
| Argument: November 12, 2019 Decided: June 18, 2020 | |
| Outcome | |
| vacated in part, reversed in part | |
| Majority | |
| Chief Justice John G. Roberts • Ruth Bader Ginsburg • Stephen Breyer • Elena Kagan • Sonia Sotomayor | |
| Concurring | |
| Sonia Sotomayor • Clarence Thomas • Samuel Alito • Neil Gorsuch • Brett Kavanaugh | |
| Dissenting | |
| Sonia Sotomayor • Clarence Thomas • Samuel Alito • Neil Gorsuch • Brett Kavanaugh | |
Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California is a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case involving whether the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) lawfully ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
The court ruled that DHS's decision to end DACA did not properly follow the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The majority opinion held that DHS failed to provide required analysis of all relevant factors associated with ending the program, thus making the agency's decision arbitrary and capricious under the APA. The court remanded the issue back to DHS, which can reattempt to end the program by providing a more thorough explanation for its decision.
Chief Justice Roberts delivered the majority opinion of the court saying, “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 dissenting opinion, Justice Thomas argued that the administration should be able to rescind policies not lawfully implemented: “To state it plainly, the Trump administration rescinded DACA the same way that the Obama administration created it: unilaterally, and through a mere memorandum.” He argued that the court’s decision was “an effort to avoid a politically controversial but legally correct decision.”[1]
The case was argued on November 12, 2019, during the court's October 2019-2020 term.
You can review the lower court's opinion here.
Why it matters: The court ruled that federal agencies must follow APA procedures to end programs that were not created according to those procedures. In his dissent, Justice Thomas argued that the decision creates incentives for outgoing administrations to bind their successors to programs created outside of APA procedures. An agency "is not only permitted, but required, to continue administering unlawful programs that it inherited from a previous administration," according to Thomas.
Timeline
The following timeline details key events in this case:
- June 18, 2020: The U.S. Supreme Court vacated in part and reversed in part the decision of the 9th Circuit.
- November 12, 2019: The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument.
- June 28, 2019: The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
- November 8, 2018: 9th Circuit affirmed the decision of the district court.
- November 5, 2018: DHS, the petitioner, filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court.
- January 9, 2018: The United States District Court for the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction barring the government from rescinding DACA.
Background
DACA created and reversed
In 2012, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) started the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protected certain individuals residing in the United States without legal permission from deportation and allowed those individuals to go to school and work. In 2017, DHS reversed the DACA policy on the orders of the U.S. attorney general, who concluded the program was unlawful.[2]
DHS determined that DACA was unlawful because the policy was similar to the DAPA and expanded DACA programs blocked by the 5th Circuit in 2015 for violating Title 8 of the United States Code and Administrative Procedure Act (APA) procedures.[3] The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the 5th Circuit in 2016.[3] DHS argued that even if later courts found that DACA was legal, it was appropriate to end the program in light of doubts about its legality.[3] In a memo responding to the district court in NAACP v. Trump, former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen argued that "DHS should enforce the policies reflected in the laws adopted by Congress and should not adopt public policies of non-enforcement of those laws for broad classes and categories of aliens under the guise of prosecutorial discretion."[3]
Lawsuits following DACA reversal
After the announcement of the decision to rescind DACA, several lawsuits were filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, the Eastern District of New York, and the District of Columbia challenging the decision to end the program. The Regents of the University of California filed the first lawsuit on September 8, 2017.[2][3]
The Regents alleged the decision to rescind the DACA program:
- was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA),
- violated the APA's notice-and-comment rulemaking requirement,
- denied respondents' right to equal protection and due process, and
- allowed the government to use information obtained through DACA in a manner inconsistent with DACA's original principles.[3]
District court blocks DACA wind-down
On January 9, 2018, the Northern District of California issued a preliminary injunction barring the government from rescinding DACA. On January 12, the district court issued another order dismissing claims that (1) the decision to rescind DACA violated the APA's notice-and-comment requirement and (2) allowed the government to use DACA information for purposes inconsistent with its original intent.[3]
Appeals to the 9th Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court
The government filed an appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which heard oral argument on May 15, 2018, but had not issued an opinion as of November 5, 2018, when the government asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. In its petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, the government argued the "decision to rescind the DACA policy is not arbitrary and capricious, does not violate equal-protection or due process principles, and is not otherwise unlawful."[3][5]
On November 8, 2018, the 9th Circuit affirmed the decision of the district court to grant a preliminary injunction, which kept the DACA program in place.[6]
The U.S. Supreme Court granted the government's petition to review the case on June 28, 2019.[5] The case came on a writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. It was consolidated with Trump v. NAACP and McAleenan v. Vidal, which came out of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, respectively.
Questions presented
The petitioner presented the following questions to the court:
| Questions presented: (1) Whether DHS's decision to wind down the DACA policy is judicially reviewable. |
Outcome
The U.S. Supreme Court nullified in part and reversed in part the 9th Circuit's ruling with a 5-4 vote against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.[1]
Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the opinion of the court, except for part IV. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan joined the full opinion. Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined the opinion except for part IV.
Sotomayor filed an opinion concurring in part, concurring in the judgment in part, and dissenting in part.
Justice Clarence Thomas filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.
Justices Alito and Brett Kavanaugh each filed opinions concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part.
Opinions
Opinion of the court
A majority of the justices ruled that DHS's decision to end the DACA program was judicially reviewable and that its decision was unlawfully arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.[1]
In the opinion of the court, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote:[1]
| “ | 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. ...
But Duke did not appear to appreciate the full scope of her discretion, which picked up where the Attorney General’s legal reasoning left off. ... because DHS was 'not writing on a blank slate,' ... it was required to assess whether there were reliance interests, determine whether they were significant, and weigh any such interests against competing policy concerns. ... Acting Secretary Duke should have considered those matters but did not. That failure was arbitrary and capricious in violation of the APA.[7] |
” |
In part IV of the opinion, the court rejected a claim that DHS's decision to end the DACA program was motivated by animus and violated the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment.[1]
Other opinions
In her opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the majority was correct to rule that DHS violated the APA when it ended the DACA program. She argued that the court should have remanded the case to a lower court to give plaintiffs a chance to develop their equal protection challenges.[1]
In his opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas argued:
| “ | To state it plainly, the Trump administration rescinded DACA the same way that the Obama administration created it: unilaterally, and through a mere memorandum.
|
” |
Thomas argued that the majority's opinion was "an effort to avoid a politically controversial but legally correct decision" and that "it will hamstring all future agency attempts to undo actions that exceed statutory authority." He dissented from the decision to review DHS's decision under the APA and from the conclusion that the agency acted unlawfully by ending DACA; however, Thomas concurred in the court's decision to reject the equal protection claim against DHS in part IV of its opinion.[1]
In his opinion, Justice Samuel Alito argued that "the Federal Judiciary, without holding that DACA cannot be rescinded, has prevented that from occurring during an entire Presidential term. Our constitutional system is not supposed to work that way."[1] He agreed with the opinions written by Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh.
In his opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued that the court should have considered the reasons for ending DACA contained in a memo written by Kirstjen Nielsen instead of ruling that they were illegitimate post hoc rationalizations. He dissented from the court's reasoning about the plaintiffs' APA claims, but concurred in their rejection of the plaintiffs' equal protection challenge.[1]
Text of the opinion
Read the full opinion here.
Oral argument
Oral arguments were held on November 12, 2019.[8]
Audio
- Audio of the oral argument:[8]
Transcript
- Transcript of the oral argument:[9]
Commentary about the case
Pre-decision commentary
Michael D. Shear and Adam Liptak at The New York Times emphasized the fact that the U.S. Supreme court would decide this case during an election year and that immigration would likely be a major campaign theme.[10] They added, "A decision to let the Trump administration end the program could energize angry Democratic voters and immigration advocates to campaign even more aggressively against the president. If the court prevents Mr. Trump from ending DACA, that could fire up his base of voters."[10]
Dara Lind, analyzing the case for Vox, argued that it was difficult to predict how the U.S. Supreme Court would rule in this case.[11] Lind said, "The Trump administration definitely didn’t check the APA boxes that an agency has to check when creating a new regulation. But the Obama administration didn’t do that in creating DACA, either. So the question is essentially whether it’s illegal to skip steps in ending a program just because steps were skipped in creating it — and because there is now a group of people (DACA recipients themselves) who would be harmed by ending it, several judges have found that it is."[11]
David French, writing for National Review, argued that courts blocking Trump from ending DACA were wrong.[12] He argued, "Put simply, this means that progressive judges are retroactively granting Obama the discretion to implement DACA, but imposing unilateral limits on Trump’s ability to end DACA. In essence, these judges are making the nonsensical determination that Obama had the prosecutorial discretion to begin the DACA program, but Trump does not have the prosecutorial discretion to end it."[12] He also argued that judges blocking a lawful Trump policy could backfire because "the pattern [might] repeat itself in the face of a Biden or Harris administration. Conservative dissenters from presidential policy will find a hospitable district court, seek a nationwide injunction, and then desperately seek to run out the clock until the next presidential election."[12]
Post-decision commentary
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote, "The practical consequence of the ruling is that a President can create an unlawful policy without legislation from Congress, but a future President cannot lawfully undo it without first jumping through regulatory hoops that can take years. This is an invitation for executive mischief, especially by Presidents at the end of their terms. They’ll issue orders that will invite years of legal challenge if the next President reverses them."[13]
Amy Howe, a reporter writing for SCOTUSblog, said that the ruling "had echoes of last year’s decision in the challenge to the Trump administration’s effort to include a question about citizenship on the 2020 census. In that case, although the court didn’t rule out the possibility that the government could add a question about citizenship to the census, Roberts joined the court’s more liberal justices in holding that the rationale that the government offered at the time for including the question was a pretext, and the court sent the case back for a do-over."[14]
Zachary Price, professor of law at UC Hastings Law, argued in an article for SCOTUSblog that "the decision appears to reflect an impulse I have called “symmetric constitutionalism”—deliberately spreading case outcomes and doctrinal benefits across major partisan divides so as to preserve judicial legitimacy and shared legal commitments. Yet by engaging in essentially ad hoc reasoning to reach such a politically significant result, the court in Regents violated a central requirement that such symmetry should entail—namely, the imperative to anchor decisions that disappoint one faction today in generalizable principles that may disappoint their rivals tomorrow." Price claimed that the court used flawed legal reasoning in a way that progressives may come to regret if the Trump administration uses this case as precedent for loosening enforcement of gun control or labor regulations in a way that makes it difficult for future presidential administrations to reverse.[15]
See also
External links
- U.S. Supreme Court docket file - Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California (petitions, motions, briefs, opinions, and attorneys)
- SCOTUSblog case file for Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 Supreme Court of the United States, "Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California," June 18, 2020
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, Regents of the University of Cal. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, decided January 9, 2018
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 Supreme Court of the United States, Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California: "Petition for a writ of certiorari," accessed July 5, 2019
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Supreme Court of the United States, Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California: "Questions presented," accessed July 3, 2019
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 SCOTUSblog, "Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California," accessed July 9, 2019
- ↑ United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, "Regents of the University of California v. USDHS," November 8, 2018
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Supreme Court of the United States, Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., argued November 12, 2019
- ↑ Supreme Court of the United States, "Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California Transcript of Oral Argument," argued November 12, 2019
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 The New York Times, "It’s Now the Supreme Court’s Turn to Try to Resolve the Fate of the Dreamers," Michael D. Shear and Adam Liptak, June 28, 2019
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Vox, "The Supreme Court will finally take up DACA’s fate next term," Dara Lind, June 28, 2019
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 National Review, "The Judicial Resistance Rescues DACA, Again," David French, May 17, 2019
- ↑ Wall Street Journal, "On Daca, Obama Can but Trump Can’t," June 18, 2020
- ↑ SCOTUSblog, "Opinion analysis: Court rejects Trump administration’s effort to end DACA (Updated)," June 18, 2020
- ↑ SCOTUSblog, "Symposium: DACA and the need for symmetrical legal principles," June 19, 2020
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