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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump pick Gorsuch casts deciding Supreme Court vote against deporting immigrant
ustice Neil Gorsuch, President Trump's first Supreme Court appointment, cast the deciding vote in a decision released Tuesday that sided with an immigrant fighting his deportation.
Gorsuch sided with court's four liberal justices in favor of the immigrant, James Garcia Dimaya, who the government sought to deport after his second first-degree burglary conviction in California. The Justice Department argued his first-degree burglary conviction constituted a crime of violence, which is an aggravated felony that results in deportation under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
However, the court said Tuesday that the laws definition of a crime of violence is too vague.
In delivering the opinion of the court Justice Elena Kagan relied on a 2015 ruling in which the court said a similar clause in the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) that defined a violent felony was unconstitutionally void for vagueness.
http://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/383512-supreme-court-invalidates-law-requiring-the-deportation-of?userid=229233
I'm waiting for Trumpy to blame the Democrats for this decision.
Wwcd
(6,288 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Before holding a lawful permanent resident alien like James Dimaya subject to removal for having committed a crime, the Immigration and Nationality Act requires a judge to determine that the ordinary case of the alien's crime of conviction involves a substantial risk that physical force may be used. But what does that mean? Just take the crime at issue in this case, California burglary, which applies to everyone from armed home intruders to door-to-door salesmen peddling shady products. How, on that vast spectrum, is anyone supposed to locate the ordinary case and say whether it includes a substantial risk of physical force? The truth is, no one knows. The law's silence leaves judges to their intuitions and the people to their fate. In my judgment, the Constitution demands more.
I don't think we should imagine Gorsuch is being kinda "liberal." He wants an adequate definition to follow and the law does not provide one. His fellow conservatives just wanted to nail "criminal aliens," no need to specify what criminal is enough to save people who don't qualify from deportation. Give Gorsuch a clear rule to base decisions on and he'll be with them.
"Today's holding invalidates a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act ... on which the government relies to 'ensure that dangerous criminal aliens are removed from the United States,'" Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.
The case was carried over from the high court's 2016 term, when the justices presumably deadlocked 4-4 following Scalia's death and before Gorsuch was confirmed 14 months later.
But if that never-confirmed split was along ideological lines with conservative justices backing the government and liberals siding with the immigrant facing mandatory removal -- Gorsuch's addition turned out to be counterproductive.
During oral argument on the first day of the 2017 term in October, Gorsuch wondered how the court could define a crime of violence if Congress did not.
"Even when it's going to put people in prison and deprive them of liberty and result in deportation, we shouldn't expect Congress to be able to specify those who are captured by its laws?" Gorsuch asked Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler.
The vagueness doctrine is meant to apply in cases where the criminal or civil penalty is severe, and during oral argument, Justice Samuel Alito wondered how to define severity. Gorsuch had a ready answer.
ProudMNDemocrat
(16,878 posts)Or should I say, term in office so far.
Still, I do not trust Neil Gorsuch for as far as I can throw him.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)But at least he wanted a valid provision in the law to uphold, and didn't just pretend one wasn't there.
Link to tweet
No doubt.