US Supreme Court Blocks Obama Immigration Plan

The United States Supreme Court yesterday dealt President Barack Obama a harsh defeat by blocking his plan to spare millions of illegal immigrants from deportation in a split 4-4 ruling he called frustrating to those aiming to fix America’s broken immigration system.

The ruling, coming seven months before Obama’s term in office ends, marked the latest success that his Republican adversaries have had in thwarting a major policy initiative of the Democratic president. It also guarantees that immigration will remain a prominent part of the campaign ahead of the Nov. 8 election in which voters will pick his successor.

“For more than two decades now, our immigration system ... has been broken, and the fact that the Supreme Court was not able to issue a decision today doesn’t just set the system back even further, it takes us further from the country that we aspire to be,” Obama said at the White House. The 4-4 decision left in place a 2015 lower-court ruling blocking his executive action on immigration, which was never implemented.

Obama unveiled his plan in November 2014 and it was quickly challenged in court by Republican-governed Texas and 25 other states that argued that Obama exceeded his presidential powers by taking the executive action and bypassing Congress.