Supreme Court dismisses Republican challenge to immigration rules

The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed an attempt by Republican-led states to defend a Trump-era immigration policy that made it harder for immigrants to obtain green cards and that has been abandoned by the Biden administration.

In a one-sentence order, the court dismissed the case spearheaded by the state of Arizona as “improvidently granted.” That means that after oral arguments in the case in February, the justices decided they should not have gotten involved in the first place.

But in an unusual concurring opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts accused the Biden administration of apparent gamesmanship in abandoning the rule after lower courts ruled against it. He raised questions — shared by other justices when the court heard oral arguments in the case — about whether the administration was skirting the legal requirements that apply when a presidential administration vacates a policy of its predecessor.

The administration’s “maneuvers” could be seen as an attempt to avoid judicial review of whether “the Government’s actions, all told, comport with the principles of administrative law,” Roberts wrote.

He said a “mare’s nest” of procedural problems stood in the way of the court making such a decision, however, and his words read more like a warning for the future. It was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

The court still must rule before the end of the term on another Biden administration case involving immigration. It involves lower-court decisions that have kept the administration from ending a “remain in Mexico” requirement imposed by President Donald Trump that keeps asylum seekers along the southern border outside the United States while their cases are decided.

Wednesday’s case was about Trump’s “public charge” rule, approved in 2019, which denied green cards to immigrants if they had relied too much on social welfare programs such as food stamps. It was in effect about a year, but courts across the country judged it at odds with federal immigration law, and a district judge in Illinois in November 2020 said it could not be implemented nationwide.

The substance of the rule was not before the Supreme Court, and Roberts noted that the decision of the Illinois judge was still being appealed. He said the court’s action in the Arizona case “should not be taken as reflective of a view” on the procedural issues, “or on 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.”

The case is Arizona v. San Francisco.