February 23, 2020

AKALib

Daily Kos

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a scathing dissenting opinion on Friday, on the SCOTUS ruling that allows the trump administration to enforce the “public” charge rule against immigrants in the state of Illinois, accusing her conservative colleagues of being nakedly biased towards the trump administration.

As reported by www.scotusblog.com/…, last month the Supreme Court granted the federal government’s request for permission to enforce a rule known as the “public charge” rule, which prohibits non-citizens from receiving a green card if the government believes that they are “likely at any time to become a public charge.” By a 5-4 vote on Friday evening, the SCOTUS allowed the government to enforce the rule in Illinois while it appeals an order by a district court there that prohibited the government from enforcing the rule in that state. All 4 liberal justices indicated that they would have denied the government’s request.

The order enables the government to enforce the “public charge” rule in Illinois while its appeal is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit – which is scheduled to hear oral argument in the case next week.

Here are some excerpts from Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s withering dissent (emphasis mine) -

Today’s decision follows a now-familiar pattern. The Government seeks emergency relief from this Court, asking it to grant a stay where two lower courts have not. The Government insists—even though review in a court of appeals is imminent—that it will suffer irreparable harm if this Court does not grant a stay. And the Court yields.

The Government cannot state with precision any of the supposed harm that would come from the Illinois-specific injunction, and the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has scheduled oral argument for next week. The Government’s professed harm, therefore, boils down to an inability to enforce its immigration goals, possibly in only the immediate term, in one of 50 States. It is hard to say what is more troubling: that the Government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the Court would grant it.

Sotomayor points out the arbitrary and capricious nature of the administration’s change in policy -

This case concerns a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that renders inadmissible any noncitizenwho “is likely at any time to become a public charge.” 8 U. S. C. §1182(a)(4)(A). ... Per that guidance, immigration officers were not to consider non-cash public benefits in deciding whether a noncitizen met that definition.

In August 2019, the Department of Homeland Security issued a regulation that changed this longstanding definition. … The regulation also expands the type of benefits that may render a noncitizen inadmissible, including non-cash benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly foodstamps), most forms of Medicaid, and various forms of housing assistance.

She lays out the hollowness of the Government’s arguments -

The Government has not quantified or explained any burdens that would arise from this state of the world. Indeed, until this Court granted relief in the New York cases, the Government itself did not consider this Illinois-specific harm serious enough to warrant asking this Court for relief.

These facts—all of which undermine the Government’s assertion of irreparable harm—show two things, one about the Government’s conduct and one about this Court’s own. First, the Government has come to treat “th[e] exceptional mechanism” of stay relief “as a new normal.” .... Claiming one emergency after another, the Government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases, demanding immediate attention and consuming limited Court resources in each. And with each successive application, of course, its cries of urgency ring increasingly hollow.

She also lays the blame on the conservative justices of the Court -

Second, this Court is partly to blame for the breakdown in the appellate process. That is because the Court—in this case, the New York cases, and many others—has been all too quick to grant the Government’s “reflexiv[e]” requests.

And delivers a strong admonishment on the Court’s acquiescence to the administration’s wishes over the needs and rights of the People —

Perhaps most troublingly, the Court’s recent behavior on stay applications has benefited one litigant over all others. This Court often permits executions—where the risk of irreparable harm is the loss of life—to proceed, justifying many of those decisions on purported failures “to raise any potentially meritorious claims in a timely manner.” … Yet the Court’s concerns over quick decisions wither when prodded by the Government in far less compelling circumstances—where the Government itself chose to wait to seek relief, and where its claimed harm is continuation of a 20-year status quo in one State. I fear that this disparity in treatment erodes the fair and balanced decision making process that this Court must strive to protect.

I respectfully dissent.

slate.com/… summarizes it thus -

Put simply: When some of the most despised and powerless among us ask the Supreme Court to spare their lives, the conservative justices turn a cold shoulder. When the Trump administration demands permission to implement some cruel, nativist, and potentially unlawful immigration restrictions, the conservatives bend over backward to give it everything it wants. There is nothing “fair and balanced” about the court’s double standard that favors the government over everyone else. And, as Sotomayor implies, this flagrant bias creates the disturbing impression that the Trump administration has a majority of the court in its pocket.

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