Emergency file

Less than two months after the divided court allowed the earlier suspension order to be retained, the Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration from implementing the latest federal suspension of deportation orders on Thursday night, which was implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic.The judges are ideologically divided, and the three liberal judges of the court — Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan — opposed Unsigned eight-page decisionThe ruling is the second time that the Biden administration has failed in the so-called “shadow file” in three days Refused on tuesday night Prevent the lower court from requesting the Biden administration to restore the Trump-era “stay in Mexico” order.

The decision to suspend the deportation is a decisive condemnation of the Biden administration. Most people wrote that it “incredibly believes” that the public health law at the center of the case gives the Centers for Disease Control the power to enact the bill. pause. The court emphasized: “If the federal government’s suspension of deportation continues, Congress must specifically authorize it.”

When judges were asked to intervene at the end of June, they were considering whether to lift the ban on evictions that apply to all rental properties in the United States. CDC has extended the suspension period to July 2021.

A group of Alabama real estate agents and landlords went to the federal court in Washington, DC to challenge the suspension order. They argued that the CDC does not have the authority to implement a moratorium, which they say cost landlords billions of dollars in unpaid rent each month.

The divergent Supreme Court rejected the challenger’s request Cancel the previous ban on deportation. Justice Brett Kavanaugh provided a key vote to maintain the suspension. Although he agrees with the challenger that the CDC has no right to issue a suspension order, he worked with Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberal justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan voted together to make the ban effective, explaining that it was originally scheduled to expire at the end of July.

The White House initially stated that the CDC will not extend the suspension period after the suspension period expires. But when Congress failed to do so, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a new suspension order that applied to most (though not all) parts of the country and will last until October 3.

The real estate agent and the landlord returned to court and challenged the new version of the suspension order. The U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich (Dabney Friedrich) previously agreed with them that the CDC has no right to issue an injunction. infer Since the new version was “almost the same” as the version covered by her previous ruling, the Court of Appeal decided to shelve the order, and she was “helpless”.

The challenger then went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which retained the new version of the suspension order Short order from last week.

Challenger Come to the Supreme Court on Friday, They again argued: “Congress has never given CDC the amazing powers it now claims.” In fact, the challenger argued that the Biden administration itself initially admitted that the ban lacked legal authority before extending the ban.

In the documents submitted on MondayThe Biden administration emphasized that the new version of the deportation ban is “more targeted” than the previous version: it only applies to counties with high levels of community transmission. However, Acting Deputy Attorney General Brian Fletcher emphasized that the new version relies on the same statutory powers as the previous version—a federal law gives the CDC the power to issue regulations to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. In this case, Fletcher wrote that the CDC determined that if moving in with friends and family or becoming homeless, a large number of evicted tenants may increase the spread of COVID-19.

Fletcher described the statement by the president and others in the White House as merely “recognizing that, at least on June 29, if the initial suspension period is extended beyond July, it seems likely that the five justices will vote to lift the suspension. 31.” Fletcher wrote that although the CDC stated that it plans to end the ban unless “unexpected changes in the trajectory of the pandemic,” this is the result of highly contagious delta mutations—”dramatically, for worse Fletcher added that the hospitalization rate in some places “is approaching or even surpassing the winter peak.”

In a brief opinion issued shortly before 9:30 pm on Thursday, the court acknowledged that the public has a “strong” interest in fighting COVID-19, especially the spread of delta variants. But this is not enough for the deportation ban to be implemented. The court explained that the challenger “almost certainly will succeed based on the argument that they believe that the CDC is beyond its authority”—a key factor for the challenger to seek emergency relief—because the CDC relied on “decades-old regulations” to grant The agency has the power to stop the spread of diseases by taking actions such as fumigation and extermination. The court went on to say that the government’s interpretation would “give the Center for Disease Control and Prevention with amazing powers”—the court stated that it was “difficult to see what measures this interpretation would take beyond the scope of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention”.

The court noted that since the early proceedings in the case, the government has had more time to allocate funds to help tenants affected by the pandemic. The court noted that Congress has also noted that it needs to take action if it wants to extend the moratorium, but it has not done so. The court emphasized that “our system does not allow institutions to take illegal actions for the purpose of pursuing ideals,” and concluded that it is now “up to Congress, not the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” to decide whether to extend the moratorium.

In the objections of Sotomayor and Kagan, Breyer emphasized the difference between the current pandemic situation and the challenger’s request for the court to lift the ban on deportation in late June. He pointed out that more than 90% of counties in the United States are now experiencing high levels of COVID-19 transmission compared to the single-digit levels in late June.

Breyer is also not convinced that the CDC clearly lacks the power to issue an injunction. He emphasized that the lower courts are divided on this issue-he wrote, “At least it is difficult to say that the government’s interpretation of the regulations is’obviously wrong.'”

More broadly, Breyer opposed his colleague’s decision to lift the ban on deportation through an emergency appeal process. In his view, the questions raised in the case “need to make a well-thought-out decision through a comprehensive briefing and argumentation. Their answers affect the health of millions of people. We should not shelve the CDC’s expulsion in this summary procedure. Moratorium,” Breyer concluded.

This article is Originally published in Howe on the Court.