The US supreme court on Thursday dealt Barack Obama a blow by blocking his plan to spare millions of illegal immigrants from deportation in a split 4-4 ruling he called frustrating to those aiming to fix America’s immigration system. The ruling marked the latest success that his Republican adversaries have had in thwarting a major policy initiative of the Democratic president.
The Court announced Thursday that it was unable to reach a decision in the case United States v. Texas. That means the ruling of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals stands — which had kept the programs (known as DAPA and DACA+) from going into effect.
Unlike other cases on which the Court’s deadlocked since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February, this one can’t simply be taken up again once the ninth seat is filled — Obama will no longer be in office.
The Court’s deadlock could lead to judicial chaos close to the election: Pro-immigration advocates have challenged a circuit court’s authority to make decisions affecting the whole country, and have hinted they’ll bring a suit in another region of the country to put the executive actions into effect there.
In the medium term, the future of immigration policy will be decided by the winner of the 2016 presidential election: Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has promised to get rid of the existing program offering protections to young unauthorized immigrants, while presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has promised to find a way to expand protections even further than Obama did (which means she’d have to use a different justification than the one offered in the now-abortive Obama programs).
But the Court’s deadlock means that President Obama will be able to take credit only for the 700,000 immigrants protected from deportation through the 2012 program — and for the more than 2 million immigrants deported over his eight years in office. For a president who came into the White House promising to bring unauthorized immigrants out of the shadows, he’ll leave it having made it simply more dangerous for them to be there.
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