With a single sentence, Supreme Court blocks Obama immigration program

A divided Supreme Court issued a one-sentence ruling on Thursday that blocked President Obama’s sweeping plan to protect 5 million immigrants from deportation. The ruling is likely to make waves in the 2016 presidential race.

“The judgment is affirmed by an equally divided Court,” the Supreme Court announced. In a tie, the lower court’s decision prevails. There have been only eight justices on the court since the February death of Antonin Scalia.

With the decision, the court waded into the politically charged issue of illegal immigration and, by default, significantly scaled back President Obama’s executive powers without actually reaching a decision. Obama named Judge Merrick Garland to replace Scalia, but Senate Republicans have refused to even consider replacing the late justice until 2017, when Obama will be out of office.

In a statement after the tied ruling, Obama urged Congress to pass immigration reform and approve his Supreme Court nominee. He also called the decision “heartbreaking” for immigrants.

“In November, Americans are going to have to make a decision about what we care about and who we are,” Obama said, condemning election-year “fear mongering” about immigrants.

Up until now, the conservative-majority court has been kind to Obama’s legacy, upholding several challenges to his health care law and his Justice Department’s decision to discontinue defending the Defense of Marriage Act.

During oral argument in this case, however, both Justices John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy seemed skeptical that the president had the power to unilaterally shield millions of immigrants from deportation, with Kennedy saying it seemed “upside down” for Obama — and not Congress — to set those priorities. The government argued that the president has long been allowed to decide where to direct enforcement resources and that the president wanted to focus on deporting criminals and recently arrived immigrants instead of young people or their families with ties to the country.

The court’s deadlock not only prevents Obama from extending his program to 5 million new immigrants: It also leaves open the possibility that states could challenge his earlier executive action that protected about a million young people who illegally immigrated to the U.S. as children. That program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), has been less controversial, and no significant legal challenges exist to it so far. In his Thursday statement, Obama said that “fortunately” the four-year-old DACA program was not affected by the Supreme Court action.

Because the lower-court injunction was preliminary, the Obama administration still has the option of appealing the lower court for a full ruling on the stalled executive action. The administration could then appeal that decision back to the Supreme Court, hoping that by the time it arrived, Congress would have approved a ninth member. But Obama did not mention appealing the decision and suggested on Thursday that his expansion attempt was over.

This election-year move by the Supreme Court will be fodder for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Both presidential candidates can credibly argue that their Supreme Court pick will decide the fate of the 5 million immigrants who would have been protected by Obama’s DAPA — Deferred Action for Parents of Americans — program, according to Jack Chin, law professor at the University of California.

“If we have a Democratic president who appoints one or more Democrats to the Supreme Court, then we’re going to have executive immigration reform. And if we have a Republican, then we’re not,” Chin said.

Trump has vowed to repeal Obama’s executive actions on his first day of office, which would include the earlier DACA program, which shields young immigrants from deportation. He has also run on a promise to temporarily block immigration from Muslim countries.

Clinton released a statement Thursday condemning the Supreme Court’s deadlock, saying she would “do everything possible under the law to go further to protect families” and to pass comprehensive immigration reform if elected.

Meanwhile, Republicans were celebrating the decision. “The law is clear: The president is not permitted to write laws — only Congress is,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement. Trump said in a statement that the Supreme Court had blocked “one of the most unconstitutional actions ever undertaken by a President.”