Oral Argument Preview: The DAPA Challenge

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Monday in United States v. Texas, the challenge to DAPA, the deferred action program for certain unauthorized aliens.The case involves two core issues: Does a state have standing to challenge DAPA; and does DAPA violate the APA or the Take Care Clause?

Here's my oral argument preview in the ABA Preview of United States Supreme Court Cases, with permission:

FACTS

On November 20, 2014, the Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, issued a memorandum (called “guidance” by the government) that announced “new policies for the use of deferred action” for certain aliens who are not removal priorities for the Department. The memo directed the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) “to establish a process . . . for exercising prosecutorial discretion through the use of deferred action, on a case-by-case basis,” for certain parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. The process is called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or “DAPA.” To qualify, an applicant must (1) be the parent of a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident as of November 20, 2014; (2) have continuously resided in the United States since January 1, 2010, or before; (3) have been physically present here on November 20, 2014, and when applying for DAPA; (4) have no lawful immigration status on that date; (5) not fall within the Secretary’s enforcement priorities (which the Secretary set out in a companion memo, and which include removing aliens who are serious criminals and terrorists); and (6) “present no other factors that, in the exercise of discretion, make[] the grant of deferred action inappropriate.” The Secretary’s memo also expanded the criteria for deferred action under the earlier 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or “DACA.”

The Secretary’s memo explained that DAPA would reach “hard-working people who have become integrated members of American society,” have not committed serious crimes, and “are extremely unlikely to be deported” given the Department’s “limited enforcement resources.” Moreover, it would advance “this Nation’s security and economic interests and make common sense, because [it] encourage[s] these people to come out of the shadows, submit to background checks, pay fees, apply for work authorization . . . and be counted.” The memo emphasized that DAPA does not establish any right to deferred action, and that deferred action “does not confer any form of legal status” and “may be terminated at any time at the agency’s discretion.”

Under longstanding federal law, which recognizes deferred action, an alien with deferred action may apply for work authorization based on economic need. In addition, an alien with deferred action may qualify for certain federal earned-benefit programs that come with lawful work, such as Social Security retirement and disability, Medicare, and railroad-worker programs. But an alien with deferred action is not eligible to receive food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, temporary aid for need families, and many other federal public benefits. And an alien with deferred action is not eligible for any “[s]tate or local public benefit,” although states may voluntarily extend certain benefits to aliens with deferred action. For example, Texas voluntarily permitted an alien with deferred action to apply for and receive a driver’s license, which Texas subsidized.

On December 3, 2014, Texas and other states sued the Department, seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against implementation of DAPA. The plaintiffs alleged that DAPA violated the Take Care Clause of the Constitution and the Administrative Procedures Act. The district court entered a nationwide preliminary injunction against implementation of DAPA.

A divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The court ruled that at least one plaintiff, Texas, had standing, because state law would require it to subsidize a driver’s license for an alien with deferred action under DAPA. The court also ruled that the plaintiffs were substantially likely to succeed on their claim that the Department should have used notice-and-comment rulemaking (and not a mere memo by the Director) to implement DAPA. Finally, the court ruled that DAPA was “manifestly contrary” to the Immigration and Naturalization Act.

This appeal followed.

CASE ANALYSIS

The case involves two principal issues. Let’s take them one at a time.

Standing

Under Article III of the Constitution, in order to bring this case in federal court, at least one state has to show (1) that it suffered an actual or imminent “injury in fact,” (2) that DAPA caused, or will cause, the injury, and (3) that the lawsuit will redress the injury. Moreover, in order to sue under the APA, the states’ interests have to fall within the “zone of interests” of the relevant statute, here the INA. The parties frame their arguments around these rules.

The government argues first that no state has Article III standing, because DAPA does not directly injure the states or require them to do anything. The government says that any injury that DAPA causes the states is only indirect and incidental, and that states cannot establish standing on the basis of an indirect or incidental injury from the operation of immigration law (which the Constitution assigns exclusively to the federal government). Moreover, the government asserts that the claimed injury here, Texas’s costs in subsidizing temporary visitor driver’s licenses for aliens, is entirely self-imposed. The government contends that recognizing these kinds of injuries would permit states to force cases over a wide swath of federal programs, essentially allowing states to challenge the federal government at nearly every turn.

The government argues next that the states cannot sue under the APA, because their interests are not within the zone of interests under the INA. The government says that the states’ asserted interests—“reserving jobs for those lawfully entitled to work” and “comment[ing] on administrative decisionmaking”—are different than their interests in Article III standing (discussed above), and that they therefore impermissibly mix-and-match their interests for standing and APA purposes. The government also claims that the states’ asserted interests for their APA challenge, if accepted, would effectively eliminate the zone-of-interest requirement under the INA and open the door to a federal suit by any state that is unhappy with federal immigration policy.

Finally, the government argues that the executive’s enforcement discretion, including the enforcement discretion reflected in DAPA, is traditionally immune from judicial review. The government says that the decision to permit aliens to work, as an attribute of enforcement discretion, is similarly unreviewable in court.

The states argue that they have Article III standing, because DAPA requires at least one of them, Texas, to incur costs in subsidizing driver’s licenses. The states say that this injury is legitimate and not manufactured (because the driver’s license subsidy was already on the books), and therefore satisfies the Article III injury requirement. The states contend that DAPA also requires them to incur costs related to healthcare, education, and law enforcement. And they assert that they have standing to protect their citizens from “labor-market distortions, such as those caused by granting work authorization to millions of unauthorized aliens.” The states contend that they are entitled to “special solicitude” in the standing analysis under Massachusetts v. EPA. 549 U.S. 497 (2007).

The states argue next that they can challenge DAPA under the APA, because their interests fall squarely within the zone of interests in the INA. They say that DAPA grants lawful presence and eligibility for work authorization and other benefits, the crux of their interests. They say moreover that the INA does not grant the Department discretion to do this. Thus, they claim that their interests fall squarely within the zone of interests protected by the INA.

DAPA’s Lawfulness

Under basic separation-of-powers principles, Congress is charged with making the law, and the President is charged with executing it. This means that administrative action like DAPA cannot violate the INA. Under the APA, it also means that DAPA must go through notice-and-comment rulemaking, if DAPA is a new “rule” (although DAPA need not go through notice-and-comment rulemaking if it is merely a new policy). Finally, under the Take Care Clause, it means that DAPA must be a proper execution of federal law, again the INA. The parties touch on each of these principles.

The government argues that the INA provides the Secretary ample authority for DAPA. The government claims that under the INA Congress has directed the Secretary to focus limited resources on removing serious criminals and securing the border, and that DAPA, in deferring action for aliens who are not priorities for removal, is perfectly consistent with this. The government claims that DAPA serves the additional purposes of “extending a measure of repose to individuals who have long and strong ties to the community” and encouraging hard work, on the books, so as to minimize competitive harm to American workers.

The government argues next that DAPA has deep historical roots. It says that the Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service before it have adopted more than 20 similar policies in the last 50 years, deferring deportation for large numbers of aliens in defined categories. Since the early 1970s, each of these actions has also resulted in eligibility for work authorization—a practice that was codified in formal regulations in 1981. The government contends that Congress has repeatedly ratified the Department’s authority, with full knowledge of these policies.

Third, the government argues that the states are wrong to say that DAPA violates the INA. The government claims that the INA itself and past practice refute the states’ assertion that the Secretary can only authorize deferred action and work authorization for categories of aliens that Congress has specifically identified. Moreover, it claims that even the states agree that the Secretary could provide separate temporary reprieve for every one of the individuals covered by DAPA, so DAPA itself cannot be “too big.” And the government points out that longstanding regulations permit the Secretary to authorize lawful work for aliens covered by deferred action.

Fourth, the government argues that DAPA is simply a policy statement regarding how the Department will exercise discretionary authority—and not a binding rule that requires notice-and-comment procedures. Indeed, the government points out that no prior deferred action policy has been subject to notice-and-comment requirements. The government says that DAPA requires Department agents to exercise discretion in granting deferred action, and that DAPA is no less a “policy” than one that gives individual agents authority to be less forgiving for specific reasons in any individual case.

Finally, the government argues that the Take Care Clause provides the states with no basis for relief. The government claims that the Take Care arguments are simply dressed-up versions of their statutory arguments, and that in any event the Take Care Clause is nonjusticiable. But even if the Take Care Clause requires something different than the statutory analysis, and even if it is justiciable, the government says that the Secretary has complied with it by enforcing and executing the INA (for the reasons stated above).

The states argue that DAPA violates the INA. They say that Congress has to expressly authorize the executive to defer removal for whole categories of aliens, because this question is so central to the INA’s statutory scheme. But they claim that Congress has not done this. They also contend that DAPA flouts the 1996 amendments to immigration statutes that deny certain benefits to unlawfully present aliens whom the executive elects not to remove. And they say that DAPA would render meaningless Congress’s comprehensive framework, which “define[s] numerous categories of aliens that are entitled to or eligible for work authorization.”

The states argue next that DAPA is invalid, because it was promulgated without notice-and-comment procedures. The states claim that DAPA is a substantive binding rule, not a policy, and was therefore subject to notice-and-comment requirements. They say that the President compared DAPA to a military order and promised consequences for officials who defied it. They also say that it gives no discretion to Department officials in its enforcement. Moreover, the states contend that DAPA is a rule because it affects individual rights and obligations, using legislative-type criteria to determine whether an alien qualifies for substantial government benefits. The states assert that “[t]his change is immensely important to the Nation and requires at least public participation through notice-and-comment procedure.”

Finally, the states argue that DAPA violates the Take Care Clause. They claim that DAPA declares conduct that Congress has determined unlawful to be lawful. They say that this is precisely the kind of power grab that the Take Care Clause was designed to prevent.

SIGNIFICANCE

At its core, this case is about the meaning and sweep of DAPA. By the Secretary’s reckoning, DAPA is merely a policy that guides the discretion of Department agents in enforcing the INA—the same way that any Department policy might guide an agent’s discretion, well within the discretion authorized by the INA. But by the states’ reckoning, DAPA is a new and binding rule that contradicts the INA: it represents the executive’s effort to change the law, not simply enforce it.

To sort this out, the Court will look at the precise language of the INA and DAPA itself, of course. But it will also look to other indicia of congressional intent to enforce the INA. These may include things like congressional awareness of and acquiescence to longstanding Department regulations that seem to assume that the Department may use deferred action, and which grant benefits as a result of it. These may also include congressional appropriations, which amounted to $6 billion in 2016. This was enough to deport only a small portion of the estimated 11 million undocumented aliens currently living in the United States, thus strongly suggesting that Congress intended the Department not to remove large populations of unlawfully present aliens. (The government points out that the Department has recently been setting records for removals in a year, but still only removing about 440,000 in 2013, for example.) Finally, the Court will look at the Department’s prior deferred action policies, which at different times since 1960 covered undocumented Cuban nationals after the Cuban Revolution, undocumented spouses and children of aliens with legalized status, individuals who sought lawful status as battered spouses or victims of human trafficking, foreign students affected by Hurricane Katrina, widows and widowers of U.S. citizens who had no other avenue of immigration relief, and certain aliens who came to the U.S. as children.

Here’s one thing the Court won’t look at: the Department’s actual enforcement of DAPA. That’s because the states filed suit before the Department implemented DAPA, and so there is no record of Department enforcement of DAPA. The states claim that Department agents will implement DAPA much as they implemented DACA, and that under DACA agents did not exercise discretion in individual cases (suggesting that DACA and DAPA are new rules, and not merely policies guiding individual agent’s discretion).

Aside from the merits, the first issue in the case, standing, could be dispositive. It is not at all obvious that the states have standing under Court precedent. In perhaps the closest case, Massachusetts v. EPA, the Court held that the state had standing to challenge the EPA’s failure to regulate greenhouse gases, based on the state’s loss of coastline due to rising sea levels (due to increased greenhouse gases). But Massachusetts is hardly on all fours with this case. Still, it will likely play an important role in oral argument.

But it’s easy to think that these doctrinal issues are really just cover for underlying policy and political disputes. On the policy side, the case raises the important and contested questions of whether and how to deal with some of the 11 million unauthorized aliens in the United States. In particular: Should we protect certain classes of unauthorized aliens from immediate deportation for economic reasons (because they provide a net benefit to our economy), humanitarian reasons (to keep families together, for example), or just plain fairness reasons? The case also raises the important and contested question of who decides—the federal government, or the states. The Court answered that question unequivocally in favor of the federal government just four years ago in Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. ___ (2012), the SB 1070 case. This case gives the Court another crack at it.

On the political side, the case is (obviously) yet another battle in the continuing war between Republicans and President Obama over immigration and executive authority. All twenty-six states that brought the case are led by Republican governors. (Yet at least one state that has a far more sizeable portion of the unauthorized alien population in the U.S., California, led by a Democrat, is notably absent from the suit.) Moreover, President Obama said that he initiated DACA and DAPA in the first place as a reaction to congressional (Republican) failure to take up immigration reform. The case is thus at the center of the ongoing dispute between a Democratic President who in the face of congressional intransigence has governed by executive order, and the Republican opposition that claims that this represents “executive overreach.”