© 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved.
Supreme Court won't hear DACA case, leaving protections in place
Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Supreme Court won't hear DACA case, leaving protections in place

The Trump administration had wanted to be able to use the DACA program as a bargaining chip for its shutdown fight

The Supreme Court on Tuesday decided not to rule on whether or not the Trump administration's reversal of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was constitutional.

What is DACA?

In June 2012, former President Barack Obama signed an administrative order that offered protections against deportation for young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

The Trump administration has tried to reverse this order, but federal courts in California, New York, and Washington, D.C., have prevented him from doing so.

Roughly 700,000 young people in the United States are currently eligible for DACA protections.

What did the court decide?

The Supreme Court decided not to hear the case — Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California — that would have dealt with this issue. The University of California was fighting to keep the DACA program in place.

This means that the court would likely not review the case until October at the earliest, with a ruling coming in 2020, the Washington Post reported.

The regents of the University of California told the Supreme Court that there was no need to rush, since all DACA applicants must be vetted by the federal government before they can receive protection. The school also quoted a tweet from Trump that called the recipients "good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs."

The court's refusal to hear the case means that the lower court ruling that the president didn't have the authority to end the DACA program the way he did still stands and that DACA protections remain in place.

The Trump administration wanted the high court to rule that the president did have the authority to end the DACA program and had planned to use the DACA program as a bargaining chip in its ongoing shutdown fight with the Democrats in Congress.

The federal government has now been in a partial shutdown for 32 days. Trump has said that he will not sign any bill to fund the federal government that does not include $5.7 billion in funding for a wall on the border between the U.S and Mexico. Democrats in Congress have so far been unwilling to agree to this.

On Saturday, Trump had offered to extend DACA protections for three more years in exchange for a border wall. Democratic leaders turned down that offer.

Want to leave a tip?

We answer to you. Help keep our content free of advertisers and big tech censorship by leaving a tip today.
Want to join the conversation?
Already a subscriber?