Tags
cognitive dissonance, Corona virus, COVID-19, immigration, pandemic, right wingnuts, stay, Title 42, Trump administration, U.S. Supreme Court
Wait, if COVID-19 is a hoax, then Title 42 has always been moot.
Today:
EL PASO, Texas – The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling Tuesday, granted a GOP request to prevent the winding down of the Title 42 immigration policy – and agreed to decide in its February argument session whether 19 states that oppose the policy should be allowed to intervene in defense of it in the lower courts.
[….]
Under Title 42, immigration authorities were able to quickly remove many of the migrants they encountered – without giving them a chance to ask for asylum protection or other protections under U.S. law. The restrictions were put in place as a public health order by former President Donald Trump’s administration in March 2020 when COVID-19 was just beginning to surge in this country.
[….]
From the dissent:
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 22A544 (22–592)
ARIZONA, ET AL. v. ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS,
SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY
ON APPLICATION FOR STAY
[December 27, 2022][….]
Reasonable minds can disagree about the merits of the D. C. Circuit’s intervention ruling. But that case-specific decision is not of special importance in its own right and would not normally warrant expedited review. The D. C. Circuit’s intervention ruling takes on whatever salience it has only because of its presence in a larger underlying dispute about the Title 42 orders. And on that score, it is unclear what we might accomplish. Even if at the end of it all we find that the States are permitted to intervene, and even if the States manage on remand to demonstrate that the Title 42 orders were lawfully adopted, the emergency on which those orders were premised has long since lapsed.
[….]
The only plausible reason for stepping in at this stage that I can discern has to do with the States’ second request. The States contend that they face an immigration crisis at the border and policymakers have failed to agree on adequate measures to address it. The only means left to mitigate the crisis, the States suggest, is an order from this Court directing the federal government to continue its COVID-era Title 42 policies as long as possible…
[….]
But the current border crisis is not a COVID crisis. And courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency. We are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort.
Even Neil Freakin’ Gorsuch got that much.
