United States v. Texas, 579 U.S. ___ (2016), is a United States Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program.
In a one-line per curiam decision, an equally divided Court affirmed the lower-court injunction blocking the President's program. The case was decided by an eight-member bench due to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
Background
On June 27, 2013, the U.S. Senate's Gang of Eight successfully passed its comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate. However, the Republican-controlled House did not initially act on the Senate's bill. When pressed during an interview on Univision in March 2014, to take unilateral executive action to limit deportations, President Barack Obama replied "until Congress passes a new law, then I am constrained in terms of what I am able to do".
On June 9, 2014, House Whip Kevin McCarthy announced that House Republicans had enough votes to pass the bill. However, the next day House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary election. So on June 30, Speaker John Boehner announced that he would not bring the bill to a vote. That same day, President Obama delivered remarks in the White House Rose Garden promising to "fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own, without Congress".
Over the next four months, the Obama Administration went through sixty iterations of different possible executive actions. Finally, on November 20, 2014, President Obama delivered a primetime televised address to the nation announcing DAPA. The Office of Legal Counsel advised that the program was constitutional, finding it was similar to President George H. W. Bush's 1990 "Family Fairness" program. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson then released two memorandums directing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau to make aliens who lacked criminal histories the lowest priority for removal,<ref>Memorandum from Jeh Charles Johnson, Secretary, Department of Homeland Sec., to Thomas S. Winkowski, Acting Director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, et al., Policies for the Apprehension, Detention and Removal of Undocumented Immigrants, [[Department of Homeland Security, November 20, 2014.</ref> and to grant deferred action to illegal immigrants who are the parents of a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.
The President's program, when combined with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, would have delayed the deportation of slightly less than half of the 11 million undocumented aliens in the United States. The New York Times reported that "more than 10 million people live in households with at least one potentially DAPA-eligible adult" and that "two-thirds of these adults have lived in the United States for at least 10 years". Over half the undocumented aliens eligible for the President's delayed deportation live in California, Texas, and New York.
Two weeks later, the Attorney General of Texas Greg Abbott, whose was suit joined by twenty-six other states, sued in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Of the 3.6 million illegal aliens eligible for DAPA, 2.2 million reside in states that did not join the lawsuit.
United States District Court
On February 16, 2015, United States District Judge Andrew S. Hanen in Brownsville, Texas, issued a preliminary injunction against an executive action taken by President Barack Obama that would have given illegal immigrants legal status and protection and let them apply for work permits.Barbash, Fred (February 17, 2015). "Federal Judge in Texas Blocks Obama Immigration Orders". The Washington Post. Retrieved February 24, 2015. The U.S. government on February 23, 2015, asked the Court to lift the injunction while it appealed his ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans;cmgdigital.com: "Case 1:14-cv-00254 Document 150 - Defendants' Emergency Expedited Motion to Stay the Court's February 16, 2015 Order Pending Appeal and Supporting Memorandum", February 23, 2015 it also proposed that the Court could issue a partial stay that would allow every state except for Texas to start implementing DAPA.