The Statue of Liberty stands as a symbol that this nation was built on immigration.  This past term (and apparently this upcoming term) immigration was a significant part of the Supreme Court docket.  Of the eight cases involving immigration or the border, the Supreme Court issued decisions in five, sent one back to the lower courts (in light of one of the four decisions), and set two for re-argument in the fall (as both were argued before Justice Gorsuch joined the bench, the implication is that there was a 4-4 split or that the majority lacked a consensus on the legal theory for the result).  In addition, the Supreme Court is going to hear argument on the travel ban.

Going in chronological order, at the end of May, the Supreme Court issued a decision on the crimes that trigger deportation — narrowly interpreting the statute to limit the state offenses that trigger deportation.  The decision involved charges of sexual abuse against minors with the court defining minor as under 16 and requiring that the state offense be limited to minors under sixteen.  On the cases that were decided, as discussed in an earlier post, the Supreme Court struck down the law governing birth citizenship when a child is born abroad to parents with split citizenship (i.e. one is a U.S. citizen and the other is not) because the law discriminated based on the gender of the U.S. citizen.

In the next to last week of the term, the Supreme Court issued three more decisions.  The first case — involving a challenge to immigrants arrested after 9/11 — technically was not about immigration but about the right to sue the government and government official for civil rights violations.  While there is a federal statute authorizing individuals to sue state officials, there is no such statute for civil rights violations by federal officials.  While the Supreme Court has authorized such suits in a limited number of circumstances, the Supreme Court has been reluctant to expand that right.  The Supreme Court found that the claim in the most recent case were not similar to the previously recognized claims and decided that it was up to Congress to decide whether to enact a statute authorizing such claims.  That decision also led to the decision to send the second civil rights case (involving a cross-border shooting) back to the lower court to review whether it was the type of claim that could be brought.  (The lower court had originally decided the case on the issue of whether it was a civil rights violation.  In sending the case back, the Supreme Court raised doubts about some of that reasoning.) Continue Reading...