Supreme Court Repeals Take Care Clause
PUBLISHED: Tue, JUL 11th 2023 @ 8:37 am EDT by Jared Culver
In an 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court has absolved the Federal Government from the requirement to faithfully execute the laws passed by the duly elected Congress. The issue here was whether the Biden Administration could promulgate enforcement priorities contrary to the laws passed by Congress. The Court did not say President Biden was acting lawfully. Instead of asking that critical question, the Court focused on legal standing. Establishing standing is the first step in a case, and the Court must decide if an individual bringing a case has been sufficiently injured, in this case by government policy. Legal standing is effectively the right to be heard at all in court. Even though states and cities are declaring states of emergency while migrant numbers explode, Justice Kavanaugh and 7 other justices found there was no standing to even hear their complaint.
Early in his administration, after attempting to freeze all deportations for 100 days, Biden’s DHS issued new enforcement guidance via policy memo which said that no one should be an enforcement priority simply because they had violated immigration law. In other words, simply violating the law would not be sufficient to take any enforcement action. This was occurring as Biden dismissed rising border numbers as “seasonal.” After record breaking numbers showed up at the border in response to this nonenforcement policy, states attempted to sue the Biden Administration to block them from refusing to enforce the law. From Justice Kavanaugh:
“The States have not cited any precedent, history, or tradition of courts ordering the Executive Branch to change its arrest or prosecution policies so that the Executive Branch makes more arrests or initiates more prosecutions. On the contrary, this Court has previously ruled that a plaintiff lacks standing to bring such a suit.”
https://www.numbersusa.com/blog/supreme-court-repeals-take-care-clause
