Thread by @HalMarshall2309

Packing the Supreme Court continues to pay off for the Trump administration. They have repeatedly taken the unusual step of appealing directly from district courts to SCOTUS, skipping the Courts of Appeal. The Republican 5 - 4 majority has repeatedly approved Trump's actions.

Once again, @jameshohmann has done an excellent job of reporting and analysis. Most laypeople likely have no idea how extraordinary it is for the government to directly appeal to the Supreme Court for relief during the middle of a case.

"President Trump won another significant immigration victory last night from the Supreme Court, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor sounds hopping mad." washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost…

“The rule here may be, as the District Court concluded, in significant tension with the asylum statute,” Sotomayor said. It may also be arbitrary and capricious for failing to engage with the record evidence contradicting its conclusions.

“It is especially concerning, moreover, that the rule the Government promulgated topples decades of settled asylum practices and affects some of the most vulnerable people in the Western Hemisphere.”

The district judge who issued the national injunction, Jon Tigar, reasoned that a coalition of immigrant advocacy groups represented by the ACLU is likely to prevail on the merits in his courtroom, ...

"and that forcing asylum seekers to stay in violent areas of Mexico in the meantime could cause irreparable harm. Sotomayor appeared to concur with this rationale.

“Although this Nation has long kept its doors open to refugees—and although the stakes for asylum seekers could not be higher—the Government implemented its rule without first providing the public notice and inviting the public input generally required by law,” she wrote.

The bulk of Sotomayor’s critique relates to process. She argues, essentially, that it’s in poor form for the Trump administration to immediately come running to the Supreme Court, ...

with two Trump appointees and five of the nine justices appointed by Republicans, every time a lower court puts on hold a policy while legal challenges are being heard. She would prefer to let the process play out the way it has in the past.

“By granting a stay, the Court simultaneously lags behind and jumps ahead of the courts below,” Sotomayor complained. “And in doing so, the Court sidesteps the ordinary judicial process to allow the Government to implement a rule that bypassed the ordinary rulemaking process.

"I fear that the Court’s precipitous action today risks undermining the interbranch governmental processes that encourage deliberation, public participation, and transparency.”

The justice, who graduated from Yale Law School and Princeton, cites a forthcoming law review article by University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck that shows the extent to which Solicitor General Noel Francisco’s office ...

“has sought emergency or extraordinary relief from the Supreme Court with unprecedented frequency.”

Here's a link to the law review article. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

“The lower courts’ decisions warrant respect. A stay pending appeal is ‘extraordinary’ relief,” Sotomayor argued, pointing to multiple precedents.

“Given the District Court’s thorough analysis, and the serious questions that court raised, I do not believe the Government has carried its ‘especially heavy’ burden.”