I'm sure Trump is googling "how to fire a supreme court justice" right about meow.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/us/politics/supreme-court-deportations-trump.html
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a lawthat allowed the government to deport some immigrants who commit serious crimes, saying it was unconstitutionally vague. The decision will limit the Trump administration’s efforts to deport people convicted of some kinds of crimes.
The vote was 5 to 4, with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joining the court’s four more liberal members to form a bare majority, which was a first. Justice Gorsuch wrote that the law crossed a constitutional line.
“Vague laws,” he wrote in a concurring opinion, “invite arbitrary power.”
Justice Gorsuch had voted with the court’s conservative majority in February in a different immigration case, one that ruled that people held in immigration detention, sometimes for years, are not entitled to periodic hearings to decide whether they may be released on bail.
His vote in Tuesday’s case was not entirely surprising, though, as he has a skepticism of vague laws that do not give people affected by them adequate notice of what they prohibit.
Immigration advocates said the ruling could spare thousands of people from deportation.
“This decision is of enormous consequence, striking down a flawed law that applies in a vast range of criminal and immigration cases and which has resulted in many thousands of immigrants being deported for decades in violation of their due process rights,” said E. Joshua Rosenkranz, a lawyer for the immigrant at the center of the case.
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When Can Immigrants Be Deported for Crimes? Justices Hear SidesJAN. 17, 2017
first argued in January 2017 before an eight-member court left short-handed by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The justices deadlocked 4 to 4, and the case was reargued in October after Justice Gorsuch joined the court.
The case concerned James Dimaya, a native of the Philippines who became a lawful permanent resident in 1992, when he was 13. In 2007 and 2009, he was convicted of residential burglary.
The government sought to deport him on the theory that he had committed an “aggravated felony,” which the immigration law defined to include any offense “that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.”
In 2015, in Johnson v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that a similar criminal law was unconstitutionally vague. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority in Tuesday’s case, said the reasoning in the Johnson case also doomed the challenged provision of the immigration law.
She quoted at length from Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in Johnson, which said courts could not tell which crimes Congress had meant to punish.
“We can as well repeat here what we asked in Johnson,” Justice Kagan wrote, paraphrasing Justice Scalia. “How does one go about divining the conduct entailed in a crime’s ordinary case? Statistical analyses? Surveys? Experts? Google? Gut instinct?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/us/politics/supreme-court-deportations-trump.html
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down a lawthat allowed the government to deport some immigrants who commit serious crimes, saying it was unconstitutionally vague. The decision will limit the Trump administration’s efforts to deport people convicted of some kinds of crimes.
The vote was 5 to 4, with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch joining the court’s four more liberal members to form a bare majority, which was a first. Justice Gorsuch wrote that the law crossed a constitutional line.
“Vague laws,” he wrote in a concurring opinion, “invite arbitrary power.”
Justice Gorsuch had voted with the court’s conservative majority in February in a different immigration case, one that ruled that people held in immigration detention, sometimes for years, are not entitled to periodic hearings to decide whether they may be released on bail.
His vote in Tuesday’s case was not entirely surprising, though, as he has a skepticism of vague laws that do not give people affected by them adequate notice of what they prohibit.
Immigration advocates said the ruling could spare thousands of people from deportation.
“This decision is of enormous consequence, striking down a flawed law that applies in a vast range of criminal and immigration cases and which has resulted in many thousands of immigrants being deported for decades in violation of their due process rights,” said E. Joshua Rosenkranz, a lawyer for the immigrant at the center of the case.
Continue reading the main story
When Can Immigrants Be Deported for Crimes? Justices Hear SidesJAN. 17, 2017
first argued in January 2017 before an eight-member court left short-handed by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The justices deadlocked 4 to 4, and the case was reargued in October after Justice Gorsuch joined the court.
The case concerned James Dimaya, a native of the Philippines who became a lawful permanent resident in 1992, when he was 13. In 2007 and 2009, he was convicted of residential burglary.
The government sought to deport him on the theory that he had committed an “aggravated felony,” which the immigration law defined to include any offense “that, by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.”
In 2015, in Johnson v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that a similar criminal law was unconstitutionally vague. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority in Tuesday’s case, said the reasoning in the Johnson case also doomed the challenged provision of the immigration law.
She quoted at length from Justice Scalia’s majority opinion in Johnson, which said courts could not tell which crimes Congress had meant to punish.
“We can as well repeat here what we asked in Johnson,” Justice Kagan wrote, paraphrasing Justice Scalia. “How does one go about divining the conduct entailed in a crime’s ordinary case? Statistical analyses? Surveys? Experts? Google? Gut instinct?”
