Justices dismiss Trump-era immigration case
Lower ruling stands, a win for the Biden administration
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Wednesday it was wrong to wade into a dispute involving a Trump-era immigration rule that the Biden administration has abandoned, so the justices dismissed the case.
The court had said it would answer the question of whether Republican-led states, headed by Arizona, could pick up the legal defense of the Trump-era “public charge” rule that denied green cards to immigrants who use food stamps or other public benefits.
The high court heard arguments in the case in February and appeared on track to decide it. But in an unsigned, one-sentence opinion Wednesday, the court said it was dismissing the case.
That leaves in place a lower court ruling in favor of the Biden administration that the states could not intervene.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote separately to say he agreed with the decision to toss the case.
Roberts said that “bound up” in the case are “a great many issues beyond” the question that the court had agreed to decide. “It has become clear that this mare’s nest could stand in the way” of deciding the case “or at the very least, complicate our resolution of that question,” he wrote.
Roberts said the court’s action should not be taken as “reflective of … the appropriate resolution of other litigation, pending or future, related to the 2019 Public Charge Rule, its repeal, or its replacement by a new rule.”
Roberts was joined by three other justices in the court’s conservative majority: Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch was appointed to the court by Trump. The former president’s two other nominees, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, said nothing.