The Supreme Court determined in a ruling that Texas can enforce a controversial law letting state and local law enforcement arrest people they believe entered the country illegally—delivering a blow to the Biden administration, which asked the Supreme Court to get involved earlier this month, arguing the state was acting beyond its authority.
U.S. National Guard soldiers stop to talk while patrolling the Rio Grande at the U.S.-Mexico border ... [+]
The Supreme Court sided with Texas in its temporary ruling by giving the state the OK to enforce the law, but because it was acting on an emergency application from the Biden administration, it did not give any reasons for its decision.
The ruling asks a lower appeals court to promptly rule on whether the law can remain in effect during an ongoing appeal.
Conservative Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion, while liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
Sotomayor wrote the court gave “a green light to a law that will upend the longstanding federal-state balance of power and sow chaos, when the only court to consider the law concluded that it is likely unconstitutional.”
In the emergency request filed to the Supreme Court earlier in March, the Department of Justice said Texas’ Senate Bill 4 would “profoundly (alter) the status quo that has existed between the United States and the States in the context of immigration for almost 150 years.”