WASHINGTON (AP) — A tie vote by the Supreme Court is blocking President Barack Obama’s immigration plan that sought to shield millions living in the U.S. illegally from deportation.
The justices’ one-sentence opinion on Thursday effectively kills the plan for the duration of Obama’s presidency.
A tie vote sets no national precedent but leaves in place the ruling by the lower court. In this case, the federal appeals court in New Orleans said the Obama administration lacked the authority to shield up to 4 million immigrants from deportation and make them eligible for work permits without approval from Congress.
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Texas led 26 Republican-dominated states in challenging the program Obama announced in November 2014. Congressional Republicans also backed the states’ lawsuit.
North Carolina signed on as one of the states challenging the program that they called an amnesty. NC Attorney General Roy Cooper, who is running for governor, did not back the move to join the lawsuit.
Chris LaCivita, Gov. Pat McCrory’s chief strategist, was quick to pounce after the decision came down Thursday morning, saying that the decision underscores that Cooper hasn’t been doing his job as attorney general.
“Instead of defending North Carolina against unprecedented overreach from Washington, D.C., Roy Cooper stood aside as President Obama tried to unilaterally rewrite the law,” LaCivita wrote in a statement adding that Cooper consistently refuses to stand up for North Carolina families.
Angeline Echeverria, executive director of the Wake County-based Latino activist group El Pueblo, said her organization is disappointed in the actions of McCrory and the others who took part in the lawsuit.
“El Pueblo is saddened to hear that the Supreme Court has halted the expansion of deferred action programs that have already benefited thousands of North Carolinians,” Echeverria said. “We will continue to support future programs that help immigrant families as we promote the well being of all North Carolina residents.”
The Obama administration announced the programs — protections for parents of children who are in the country legally and an expansion of the program that benefits people who were brought to this country as children — in November 2014. Obama decided to move forward after Republicans won control of the Senate in the 2014 midterm elections, and the chances for an immigration overhaul, already remote, were further diminished.
The Senate had passed a broad immigration bill with Democratic and Republican support in 2013, but the measure went nowhere in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.
The states quickly went to court to block the Obama initiatives. Their lawsuit was heard by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, Texas. Hanen previously had criticized the administration for lax immigration enforcement.
Hanen sided with the states, blocking the programs from taking effect. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also ruled for the states, and the Justice Department rushed an appeal to the high court so that it could be heard this term.
A nine-justice court agreed to hear the case in January, but by the time of the arguments in late April, Justice Antonin Scalia had died. That left eight justices to decide the case, and the court presumably split along liberal and conservative lines, although the court did not say how each justice voted.
Had Scalia still been alive, though, he almost certainly would have voted with his fellow conservatives to form a majority in favor of the states.
In practical terms, a victory by presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump could mean an end to the programs anyway, since he has vowed to deport the roughly 11 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally.
If Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, is elected, she could attempt to revive the programs or work with the new Congress on comprehensive immigration legislation.