Obama's Authority Limited
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Gary [email protected]
The court ruled in favor of a group of states, led by Texas, upholding a temporary injunction against President Obama’s immigration programs – the expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents programs, or DACA and DAPA, as they are known.
According to reporting by Julia Preston in the New York Times, the court ruled in favor of Texas on all key points of the lawsuit, “finding that Obama’s amnesty likely broke the law governing how big policies are to be written.”
Now, I want to say up front that I don’t necessarily disagree with what President Obama was trying to accomplish. It was just the way he did it that bothered me.
I am no constitutional law scholar – like our president – but our system of government seems fairly simple to me.
Congress – the legislative branch – makes the laws.
The president – the executive branch – implements and enforces the laws.
Courts – the judicial branch – interprets the laws.
I’m pretty sure President Obama understands that, but he got impatient because Congress wouldn’t enact the immigration legislation he wanted.
So last November he acted on his own to grant temporary legal status and work permits to as many as 5 million illegal immigrants.
The first of Obama’s orders expanded a program protecting young immigrants from deportation if they were brought here illegally as children – DACA. That was set to take effect Feb. 16.
The second part of Obama’s plan was to give deportation protection to parents of U.S. citizens who had been here for years – DAPA. That part was supposed to start May 19.
Let the legal wrangling begin.
As part of their lawsuit, the states sought a temporary injunction to block the plan from taking effect while the suit wound its way through the courts. The temporary inunction was granted by a U.S. district judge in Brownsville, Texas, on Feb. 16, just two days before DACA was set to go into effect.
Obama’s Justice Department lawyers sought a stay of the injunction in the Fifth Circuit.
But the Fifth Circuit, in a 2-1 decision just two days before DAPA was to take effect, ruled against the Obama administration.
The injunction remains in effect, blocking both programs.
The states suing to block the plan argued that Obama overstepped his authority.
They also argued that Obama’s executive orders would force them to spend more on health care, law enforcement, education and other social services.
Obama’s lawyers argued keeping the temporary hold interfered with the Homeland Security Department’s ability to protect the U.S. and secure the nation’s borders. They also said immigration policy is a domain of the federal government, not the states.
They argued the president was well within his powers to fix the U.S. immigration system, which was broken.
See, this is where I really was scratching my head over this. I mean, how could anyone really think it was OK for the president to revise duly enacted legislation on his own?
Certainly, there is some legal wiggle room with regard to what the executive branch chooses to enforce and how it enforces it. That’s called prosecutorial discretion. But Obama’s immigration plans always seemed far beyond that to me.
Basically, Obama didn’t say, “We’re not enforcing those laws.” He said, “We’re rewriting those laws.”
As a result, states were going to be forced to do things contrary to their own existing state laws. It just made no sense to me from a legal standpoint.
Seems the U.S. Fifth District Court, which is in New Orleans, by the way, saw it that way, too.
“Although prosecutorial discretion is broad, it is not unfettered. Declining to prosecute does not convert an act deemed unlawful by Congress into a lawful one and confer eligibility for benefits based on that new classification. ...”
Basically, the court found that President Obama didn’t just announce a decision to defer enforcement of certain portions of immigration law, he laid down new rules that actually granted benefits.
“DAPA modifies substantive rights and interests — conferring lawful presence on 500,000 illegal aliens in Texas forces the state to choose between spending millions of dollars to subsidize driver’s licenses and changing its law,” the ruling states.
The government could appeal to the full appeals court in New Orleans or to the U.S. Supreme Court and there was no immediate indication of what Obama would do next.
But the rebuke was strong enough that legal scholars much brighter than I are saying it is highly unlikely a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn this ruling and lift the injunction. If that’s the case, DACA and DAPA will probably remain under injunction for the rest of Obama’s time in office.
One would think a Constitutional law scholar would know better, but it’s clear to me Obama overstepped his legal authority.
I think the court made the right decision.
We simply can’t have the executive branch establishing federal law by decree.[[In-content Ad]]
The court ruled in favor of a group of states, led by Texas, upholding a temporary injunction against President Obama’s immigration programs – the expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents programs, or DACA and DAPA, as they are known.
According to reporting by Julia Preston in the New York Times, the court ruled in favor of Texas on all key points of the lawsuit, “finding that Obama’s amnesty likely broke the law governing how big policies are to be written.”
Now, I want to say up front that I don’t necessarily disagree with what President Obama was trying to accomplish. It was just the way he did it that bothered me.
I am no constitutional law scholar – like our president – but our system of government seems fairly simple to me.
Congress – the legislative branch – makes the laws.
The president – the executive branch – implements and enforces the laws.
Courts – the judicial branch – interprets the laws.
I’m pretty sure President Obama understands that, but he got impatient because Congress wouldn’t enact the immigration legislation he wanted.
So last November he acted on his own to grant temporary legal status and work permits to as many as 5 million illegal immigrants.
The first of Obama’s orders expanded a program protecting young immigrants from deportation if they were brought here illegally as children – DACA. That was set to take effect Feb. 16.
The second part of Obama’s plan was to give deportation protection to parents of U.S. citizens who had been here for years – DAPA. That part was supposed to start May 19.
Let the legal wrangling begin.
As part of their lawsuit, the states sought a temporary injunction to block the plan from taking effect while the suit wound its way through the courts. The temporary inunction was granted by a U.S. district judge in Brownsville, Texas, on Feb. 16, just two days before DACA was set to go into effect.
Obama’s Justice Department lawyers sought a stay of the injunction in the Fifth Circuit.
But the Fifth Circuit, in a 2-1 decision just two days before DAPA was to take effect, ruled against the Obama administration.
The injunction remains in effect, blocking both programs.
The states suing to block the plan argued that Obama overstepped his authority.
They also argued that Obama’s executive orders would force them to spend more on health care, law enforcement, education and other social services.
Obama’s lawyers argued keeping the temporary hold interfered with the Homeland Security Department’s ability to protect the U.S. and secure the nation’s borders. They also said immigration policy is a domain of the federal government, not the states.
They argued the president was well within his powers to fix the U.S. immigration system, which was broken.
See, this is where I really was scratching my head over this. I mean, how could anyone really think it was OK for the president to revise duly enacted legislation on his own?
Certainly, there is some legal wiggle room with regard to what the executive branch chooses to enforce and how it enforces it. That’s called prosecutorial discretion. But Obama’s immigration plans always seemed far beyond that to me.
Basically, Obama didn’t say, “We’re not enforcing those laws.” He said, “We’re rewriting those laws.”
As a result, states were going to be forced to do things contrary to their own existing state laws. It just made no sense to me from a legal standpoint.
Seems the U.S. Fifth District Court, which is in New Orleans, by the way, saw it that way, too.
“Although prosecutorial discretion is broad, it is not unfettered. Declining to prosecute does not convert an act deemed unlawful by Congress into a lawful one and confer eligibility for benefits based on that new classification. ...”
Basically, the court found that President Obama didn’t just announce a decision to defer enforcement of certain portions of immigration law, he laid down new rules that actually granted benefits.
“DAPA modifies substantive rights and interests — conferring lawful presence on 500,000 illegal aliens in Texas forces the state to choose between spending millions of dollars to subsidize driver’s licenses and changing its law,” the ruling states.
The government could appeal to the full appeals court in New Orleans or to the U.S. Supreme Court and there was no immediate indication of what Obama would do next.
But the rebuke was strong enough that legal scholars much brighter than I are saying it is highly unlikely a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court would overturn this ruling and lift the injunction. If that’s the case, DACA and DAPA will probably remain under injunction for the rest of Obama’s time in office.
One would think a Constitutional law scholar would know better, but it’s clear to me Obama overstepped his legal authority.
I think the court made the right decision.
We simply can’t have the executive branch establishing federal law by decree.[[In-content Ad]]
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