District court declares Obama immigration action unconstitutional

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Washington Post:

Earlier Tuesday, a federal court in Pennsylvania declared aspects of President Obama’s executive actions on immigration policy unconstitutional.

 

According to the opinion by Judge Arthur Schwab, the president’s policy goes “beyond prosecutorial discretion” in that it provides a relatively rigid framework for considering applications for deferred action, thus obviating any meaningful case-by-case determination as prosecutorial discretion requires, and provides substantive rights to applicable individuals. As a consequence, Schwab concluded, the action exceeds the scope of executive authority.

 

This is the first judicial opinion to address Obama’s decision to expand deferred action for some individuals unlawfully present in the United States. [i've now posted the opinion here.]

 

The procedural background of the case is somewhat unusual. The case involves an individual who was deported and then reentered the country unlawfully. In considering how to sentence the defendant, the court sought supplemental briefing on the applicability of the new policies to the defendant, and whether these policies would provide the defendant with additional avenues for seeking the deferral of his deportation. In this case, however, it’s not entirely clear it was necessary to reach the constitutional question to resolve the issues before the court with regard to the defendant’s sentence.

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Challenging the divine right of kings...

[Valin]

Comments

 

Spanish Inquisition

1:29 PM CST

There's a very good separation of powers reason for this. Otherwise you'll have laws effectively re-written as some President can then announce - without Congressional approval - a tax cut for the rich or anything else they want to do but not have to bother with going through Congress.

David Welker

1:39 PM CST [Edited]

@Spanish Inquisition

Two questions for you.

Where does it say in the Constitution that the President cannot announce that he will refuse to the enforce the tax law? I must have read the document hundreds of times and still cannot find it. I think we all agree that if he chose to pardon a bunch of rich people who willfully refused to pay their taxes, he could do so. He could even issue them a blanket pardon.

That you think you have a really good reason for making the law up as you go along does not mean that you are not, in fact, making the law up as you go along.


The actual Constitution does not actually prevent all bad things that could possibly happen from actually happening.

SG Williamson

1:51 PM CST

Oh, you mean like they did in Roe v. Wade?

If prosecutorial discretion is unlimited with respect to scope and breadth, then the president effectively becomes a monarch as their would be no law that he found objectionable that he could just waive by fiat. Did the Founders intend to elect a monarch and not a president?

[SrWoodchuck]

@Valin

 

Where's David Welker's 2nd question? Just asking.