Texas Beats DACA – Sort Of
Federal court says Obama and Biden lacked authority
DACA is illegal, a federal court announced today in the latest round of a years-long attempt by Republican states to end the Obama era initiative. President Biden’s effort to bolster DACA’s legal footing doesn’t alter the fact that the program that has given hundreds of thousands of people who arrived in the United States as youth a legal right to live and work violates federal immigration law, concluded the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Since 2018, Texas and nine other states, all led by Republicans, have tried to end DACA by convincing courts that neither Presidents Obama nor Biden had the legal authority to promise migrants who meet strict eligibility requirements that they would be deprioritized from the risk of deportation and, meanwhile, could work lawfully. In 2022, the Fifth Circuit sided with the states based on Obama’s actions but sent the case back to the district court to consider the Biden administration’s attempt to solidify DACA’s legal position by undergoing a lengthy process of public input.
In today’s decision, Texas v. United States, a three-judge panel of the appellate court largely sided with Texas. The other states, it noted, did not even attempt to show that they had been injured by DACA’s existence, a constitutional requirement for suing called “standing.” By contrast, the judges announced, Texas has shown that DACA beneficiaries live in the state and collectively “DACA recipients impose over $750 million in annual costs on the state.” In particular, the judges noted that Texas provides “emergency medical services, social services and public education for illegal aliens.” A ruling in the state’s favor would reduce some of those costs, the court added. “If DACA were no longer in effect, at least some recipients would leave, and their departure would reduce [Texas’s] costs for those individuals and their families who depart with them,” the judges wrote. This is not a high bar. All that the court requires is that the state show that someone who has DACA and lives in Texas would leave.
Since only Texas has standing to sue the federal government over DACA, the court blocked DACA’s continuation only in Texas. Though the court doesn’t explain exactly what that means, presumably the federal government can’t renew DACA for people residing in Texas. For now, though, even that is on hold because the court issued a stay of its decision pending further intervention by the Supreme Court or the full Fifth Circuit.
Lastly, the court effectively split DACA into two parts. One part consists of DHS’s promise to DACA beneficiaries that it won’t prioritize their deportation. The other part consists of DHS’s willingness to grant employment authorization to DACA beneficiaries. The Biden administration argued that the district court should have kept the de-prioritization in place even if it blocked the employment authorization part. The appellate court today sided with the Biden administration.
For the most right-wing federal appellate court in the United States, this was a remarkably narrow decision. The court struggled to explain why a 2023 Supreme Court decision announcing that Texas had no standing to sue the federal government over Biden’s immigration enforcement priorities doesn’t also block this lawsuit. In large part, the Fifth Circuit pointed to the fact that the 2023 decision didn’t so obviously block the DACA lawsuit that the Fifth Circuit had to follow along. That 2023 case, the Fifth Circuit wrote, “did not work the kind of unequivocal change in law necessary to get around our rule of orderliness,” referencing courts’ practice of sticking to what it had already ruled in past iterations of the same lawsuit.
One question that remains after today is what the Justice Department will do before Trump takes office on Monday. It can request that the full Fifth Circuit weigh in. Alternatively, it can ask the Supreme Court to jump back into the DACA fray. Or the Biden Justice Department can do nothing. Whatever happens in the next 72 hours, DACA’s future is now in President Trump’s hands.