WASHINGTON (AP) – The Supreme Court will not allow the Biden administration to implement a policy that prioritizes the illegal deportation of people in the country who pose the greatest risk to public safety.
Thursday’s court order puts the policy on hold across the country for now. The vote was 5-4 with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in saying they would have allowed the Biden administration to implement the guidance.
The court also announced it would hear arguments in the case, saying they would be by the end of November.
The order is Jackson’s first public vote since joining the court on June 30 following the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer.
The justices were acting on the administration’s emergency request to the court after conflicting rulings by federal appeals courts on a September directive from the Department of Homeland Security that paused deportation unless people had committed acts of terrorism, espionage or “flagrant threats to public security”.
The federal appeals court in Cincinnati earlier this month overturned a district judge’s order putting the policy on hold in a lawsuit filed by Arizona, Ohio and Montana.
But in a separate lawsuit filed by Texas and Louisiana, a federal judge in Texas ordered a halt to the nationwide targeting, and a federal appeals panel in New Orleans declined to intervene.
The judge’s order amounted to a “nationwide judicial review of the executive branch’s enforcement priorities,” Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a court filing. Prelogar is the highest lawyer of the Supreme Court of the administration.
In their filing with the Supreme Court, Texas and Louisiana argued that the administration’s guidelines violate federal law that requires the detention of people who are in the United States illegally and who have been convicted of serious crimes. States said they would face additional costs from having to detain people the federal government might allow to remain free in the United States, despite their criminal records.
The guidance, released after Joe Biden became president, updated a Trump-era policy that removed people from the country illegally, regardless of criminal history or community ties.