General Discussion

Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

(108,036 posts) Tue Apr 17, 2018, 01:34 PM Apr 2018

Trump 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 law’s 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.

4 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

Trump pick Gorsuch casts deciding Supreme Court vote against deporting immigrant (Original Post) Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin Apr 2018 OP

Trump betrayed by his own SC pick? Wwcd Apr 2018 #1

Gorsuch's concurrence in his own words: Hortensis Apr 2018 #2

More to add to Trump's not-very-good week...... ProudMNDemocrat Apr 2018 #3

I trust Gorsuch to be a fairly rigid archconservative. :) Hortensis Apr 2018 #4

Wwcd

(6,288 posts)

1. Trump betrayed by his own SC pick?

Reply to Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin (Original post)

Tue Apr 17, 2018, 01:37 PM

Apr 2018

Hortensis

(58,785 posts)

2. Gorsuch's concurrence in his own words:

Reply to Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin (Original post)

Tue Apr 17, 2018, 01:41 PM

Apr 2018

In his concurrence, Justice Gorsuch explained the constitutional principle that demanded this result:

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.

USA Today: The court's other four conservatives dissented in two separate opinions totaling 46 pages -- more than Kagan and Gorsuch wrote for the majority.

"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.