The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the Trump
administration’s attempt to dismantle the program protecting undocumented
immigrants brought to the United States as children, a reprieve for nearly
650,000 recipients known as “dreamers.”
The 5-to-4 decision, written by Chief Justice John
G. Roberts Jr., stunned President Trump, who said in a tweet that it and a
ruling earlier this week that federal law protects LGBTQ workers were “shotgun
blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or
Conservatives.”
Roberts
was in the majority in both cases, and Thursday’s ruling showed once again the
pivotal role he now plays at the center of the court.
His
low-key ruling was technical — the administration had not provided proper legal
justification, he said, for ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA) program implemented by President Barack Obama eight years ago. It allows qualified enrollees to work, study and
remain in the United States on a renewable permit.
Trump has often suggested the conservative-leaning Supreme
Court would protect him against adverse rulings from lower-court judges. But
Roberts has at times joined the court’s liberal members — as happened Thursday
— to make clear for the president that his administration does not make the
rules.
Whether this pattern continues over the coming weeks will
frame what already has proved to be one of the court’s most controversial terms
in years.
Still to come: decisions on Trump’s long-running legal
battle to shield his private financial records from Congress and a New York
prosecutor; several cases involving the separation of church and state; and the
court’s first reexamination of abortion rights since Trump’s nominees, Justices
Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, ascended to the bench.
The president said the court’s decisions this week showed
why he needs the chance to further transform the court.
-Washington Post
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