Supreme Court Unf*cks Itself AGAIN. Either They Got The Message (That They Suck) Or A Doozy's Coming!

Student loan lawsuit still coming. It's anybody's guess!

 In an 8-1 ruling yesterday, the US Supreme Court decided — again! — that it would uphold a very well-established element of constitutional law instead of throwing it out and substituting some crap it just made up while smoking opium and masturbating to a copy of The Road to Serfdom . ( Rule 34 of the Internet dictates that there must somewhere be Friedrich Hayek porn.)

In a majority opinion written by Brett Kavanaugh, the Court held that the enforcement of immigration law really is the sole province of the executive branch, and no, states can't sue to force the federal government to arrest all undocumented immigrants and send them to the Moon.

As a result, the Biden administration will now be able to restore its policy of prioritizing arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants who pose a risk to public safety or to national security — and not ones who don't — no matter how much Texas Republicans may whine about it. The majority held that the plaintiffs, Texas and Louisiana, simply didn't have standing in the case, because priorities in enforcing immigration law are reserved for the Executive Branch. It's kind of basic to the constitutional separation of powers we were all supposed to learn about around sixth grade.

Kavanaugh called the lawsuit by the two states "extremely unusual" because it sought to "order the executive branch to alter its arrest policies so as to make more arrests." Instead, he suggested, maybe they should write to their congressional representatives if they want immigration law to change.

Biden announced in September 2021 that he wanted Immigration officials to focus on removing immigrants who were violent criminals, in contrast to Donald Trump's policy of trying to deport everyone, including the occasional US citizen or another US citizen or an informant who helped jail a fraudster or critically ill children — among many others, including the odd DACA recipient who forgot to carry their wallet at all times. The Biden administration had this insane idea that with 11 million undocumented people in the US, it's impossible to deport everyone, so priorities needed to be set.

Texas and Louisiana sued, claiming that the policy allowed too many very dangerous immigrants with criminal records to remain free while their deportation cases were assessed. Instead of individually assessing such risk, the states claimed federal law required they be locked up until deported.

The states claimed they were being grievously harmed by the policy, so everyone needed to stay locked up, even though the US doesn't have enough detention space. (Well heck, Joe, you could always open more private prisons who would then donate to Republicans.)

The sole dissent came from Samuel Alito, who complained that the law was the law, and that the majority had decided that

"the only limit on the power of a president to disobey a law like the important provision at issue is Congress' power to employ the weapons of inter-branch warfare."

Translation: Usually we strict constructionists say that Congress is the only legal check on the Executive Branch. But in this case, maybe Red states can step in, too, because ... well, just because is why. Maybe Justice Alito needs a nice fishing vacation to clear his head.

[ NBC News / Reuters / NYT / Photo (cropped):  Joe Ravi, Creative Commons License 3.0 ]

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