WASHINGTON – Following oral argument over the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy at the Supreme Court, which Constitutional Accountability Center Chief Counsel Brianne Gorod attended, Gorod issued the following reaction:

It’s stunning how little time this morning the Administration’s lawyer spent defending the proposition that DACA is unlawful—presumably because that argument is so difficult to make, given the broad discretion Congress has long conferred on the executive branch to make these types of enforcement decisions. Instead the Administration’s lawyer kept insisting that the Administration’s decision also rested on other grounds. But as multiple justices pointed out, it is bedrock law that the courts review the reasons that the agency gave when it acted, not reasons it gave after the fact. It’s telling that the Solicitor General doesn’t seem to want that here.

In addition, Justice Sotomayor powerfully brought home the stakes of the Trump Administration’s decision to terminate DACA, observing that it would “destroy lives.”  The President told the public that the law requires him to make that choice, but that’s wrong, and the Court shouldn’t do the President’s dirty work for him. If the President wants to make the choice to destroy lives, as Justice Sotomayor put it, he needs to own that decision and take public responsibility for it.

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Resources:

CAC case page, featuring brief on behalf of 172 current members and bipartisan former members of Congress, in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California: https://www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/department-of-homeland-security-v-regents-of-the-university-of-california-trump-v-naacp-and-mcaleenan-v-vidal/

SCOTUSblog symposium: “The DACA cases may be the next big test for the Roberts Court,” Brianne Gorod and Dayna Zolle, September 11, 2019: https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/09/symposium-the-daca-cases-may-be-the-next-big-test-for-the-roberts-court/

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Constitutional Accountability Center is a think tank, public interest law firm, and action center dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution’s text and history. Visit CAC’s website at www.theusconstitution.org.

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