Supreme Court Refuses To Hear DACA Case Just Yet

The Supreme Court is clearly in no hurry to end the DACA program:

“WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused Monday to review a federal judge’s order that the Trump administration continue a program protecting undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

The denial leaves in place the popular DACA program, which has protected some 690,000 undocumented immigrants from deportation and enabled them to get work permits.

The program had faced a March 5 deadline for congressional action set by Trump last summer. Two federal courts have ruled the administration’s action was illegal.

The justices could have agreed to hear the case this spring, leapfrogging a federal appeals court based in California that has been sympathetic to the cause of immigrants. They also could have overruled federal District Judge William Alsup without a hearing.

Instead, they simply allowed the case to run its normal course through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. …”

In other words, DACA will continue to wind its way through the Ninth Circus, and the March deadline is meaningless. This doesn’t mean the Supreme Court has upheld DACA. It only means that it isn’t going to issue an expedited ruling. So this will drag on for months and effectively kicks the issue back to Congress. There probably won’t be a final ruling on this until May or June 2019.