Supreme Court gives Biden immigration win, raising questions about other GOP lawsuits

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to use the court system to win political points against the Biden administration may face a new hurdle after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled that states did not have the authority to challenge federal immigration guidelines and directed Congress to fix the mess.

With an 8-to-1 decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court ruled that the plaintiffs, Texas and Louisiana, did not have standing to bring their suit to block the Biden administration’s guidelines issued in 2021.

But the justices also went beyond immigration when they imposed new limits on state attempts to challenge federal programs.

“If the court greenlighted this suit, we could anticipate complaints in future years about alleged executive branch under-enforcement of any similarly worded laws — whether they be drug laws, gun laws, obstruction of justice laws or the like,’’ Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion that was signed by five of the justices. “We decline to start the federal judiciary down that uncharted path.”

Kavanaugh’s statement raised the possibility that the ruling could have a potential impact on dozens of partisan lawsuits brought by Republican-led states against the Biden administration, ranging from transgender rights and abortion to student loan debt, securities regulations and horse racing.

On Thursday, DeSantis and Attorney General Ashley Moody filed the latest lawsuit against the Biden administration, suing the U.S. secretary of education, Miguel Cardona, in an effort to block accrediting agencies from having influence over the state’s public colleges and universities.

In a major victory for the Biden administration, the court restored the guidelines issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that prioritized the arrest and removal from the U.S. of noncitizens who are suspected terrorists or dangerous criminals, or who have unlawfully entered the country recently.

Texas and Louisiana had argued that the guidelines allowed immigrants with criminal records to remain free while their cases moved forward, forcing their states to jail or provide social services, such as healthcare and education, to people they said the federal government should have arrested.

Precedent in five previous administrations

But Kavanaugh noted that for decades, under five presidential administrations, the executive branch has not had the resources to adequately apprehend and detain all non-citizens who pose a threat to public safety. He called the lawsuit “extraordinarily unusual” and rejected the states’ request “to order the executive branch to alter its arrest policies so as to make more arrests.”

“Federal courts have not traditionally entertained that kind of lawsuit; indeed, the states cite no precedent for a lawsuit like this,’’ he wrote. He suggested the appropriate authority to handle the problem was Congress.

“Congress possesses an array of tools to analyze and influence those policies — oversight, appropriations, the legislative process and Senate confirmations, to name a few,” he wrote.

The challenge is part of an increasing trend by states controlled by one party to use taxpayer funds to challenge the policies of a president in another party, according to Paul Nolette, a political scientist at Marquette University, who has been tracking the practice since 2014.

Earlier this year, Nolette estimated there are 56 pending lawsuits challenging policies of the Biden administration by various states, including Florida.

The Biden immigration guidelines attempted to reverse the expansive policies of the Trump administration that targeted for deportation anyone in the country who could not produce legal documentation. The rules were challenged by now-suspended Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was joined by state officials in Louisiana. The lower courts agreed with their argument and blocked the guidelines.

In a statement on Twitter, Moody lamented the ruling but agreed the responsibility now lies with Congress.

“This is a tragic decision for our nation and the safety of our communities,’’ she said. “Congress needs to roll up its sleeves. It has a lot of work to do.”

Florida has also sued the Biden administration over its immigration policies. In 2021, Moody and DeSantis sued the Biden administration and DHS over a parole program used to help DHS relieve migrant congestion at the U.S. southern border. The state argued that DHS had released thousands of migrants into communities without initiating removal proceedings.

The federal government subsequently scaled back the parole program and, after a federal judge sided with Florida officials and halted it, DHS did not appeal the ruling.

Immigration lawyers leader likes the ruling

The decision on Friday “was a breath of fresh air coming from this court and a serious smack down” to GOP state officials like Paxton, said David Leopold, legal adviser to America’s Voice, an immigration-reform advocacy organization and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“For the past three years, Republican governors and attorneys general, led by the recently impeached Ken Paxton from Texas, have tried to take control of the federal immigration system,’’ he said. Their goal is “to create immigration chaos, and to destroy any kind of immigration policy in this country.”

Leopold said he agreed with Moody that Congress now must step up to update the nation’s immigration policy “that responds to America’s economic needs.” But he expects litigation to continue to come from GOP-led states over immigration policy because the issue generates intense interest among right-leaning voters.

“Republicans have nothing to run on in 2024, and immigration and the border are how they rile up their base,’’ he said. “They are going to continue to go into the courts to try to jam up any kind of policy that the Biden administration puts through to try to make a broken immigration system work until Congress will fix it.”

On Monday, DeSantis will return to the Texas border where he will announce his proposed policy to manage the U.S.-Mexico border.

Kavanaugh was joined in the majority opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal members, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett voted with the majority but did not adopt its rationale. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a dissent in which he suggested that the ruling gives the executive branch too much discretion when enforcing the law.

“To put the point simply, Congress enacted a law that requires the apprehension and detention of certain illegal immigrants whose release, it thought, would endanger public safety,” Alito wrote. “The secretary of D.H.S. does not agree with that categorical requirement. He prefers a more flexible policy.”

Mary Ellen Klas can be reached at meklas@miamiherald.com and @MaryEllenKlas