Obama Administration Asks SCOTUS to Rehear Immigration Case When Fully Constituted
On July 18, the Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court for a rehearing in the case of United States v. Texas once a ninth justice is installed. The case examined the legality of Obama’s 2014 executive actions. His proposed DAPA program would have temporarily shielded four million immigrants from deportation and granted them the legal ability to work. His actions also would have allowed for an expanded version of the already existing DACA program. On June 23, SCOTUS announced that it had deadlocked on the case in a 4-4 tie.
The administration has acknowledged that it is rare for the Court to grant a rehearing. But they have emphasized that the Court has granted rehearings in several cases in the past, when a vacancy on the bench resulted in an equally divided Court. In some of those cases, the Court did not rehear arguments for six to eight months after it agreed to grant a rehearing. The administration has further noted in the late nineteenth century, there were several instances where a period of years elapsed between the time that a rehearing was a granted and the time rearguments were heard.
During this last term, SCOTUS deadlocked on four cases including United States v. Texas. Since the end of the term, two have petitioned the Court for a rehearing. The Court denied them both. But the Obama administration has argued that the need for a rehearing in United States v. Texas is more pressing. They argued that unlike in the other two cases, the question of the policy’s validity is unlikely to arise in any future case.
The petition has been lauded by the Center for American Progress. They emphasized the necessity of Supreme Court guidance in this case because the decision dramatically affects the lives of millions of people.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/07/obama-administration-asks-court-to-rehear-immigration-case/
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