Supreme Court to Hear Arguments Today in Public Charge Case

Official Supreme Court Photo

Amy Howe for SCOTUSBlog offers a preview of the oral arguments before the Supreme Court in an immigration case later this morning:

“the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a dispute over whether a group of states, led by Arizona, can defend a contentious Trump-era immigration policy known as the `public charge’ rule after the Biden administration declined to do so. The oral argument in Arizona v. City and County of San Francisco comes less than a week after the justices agreed to decide . . . whether the Biden administration must continue to enforce another controversial Trump-era immigration policy known as the `remain in Mexico’ policy, which requires asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while they wait for a hearing in U.S. immigration court.”

Technically, the question before the Court is whether Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24 allows the states to intervene in an action to defend the Trump public charge rule when the Biden White House has decided not to do so.

In addition to Arizona, the states seeking to intervene to challenge the Biden administration’s rescission of President Trump’s public charge rule include Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia.

KJ

UPDATE (Feb. 24):  Amy Howe recaps the arguments here.  Her bottom line:  “After nearly 90 minutes of debate in Arizona v. City and County of San Francisco, several of the justices seemed troubled by the Biden administration’s conduct and the prospect that the states may be left without any options in their effort to defend the rule’s legality. But they did not necessarily agree on what those options should be.”

Mike LaSusa for Law360 had a slightly different take:  “U.S. Supreme Court justices were skeptical of some red states’ strategy to revive a Trump-era rule that curbed low-income migrants’ access to green cards, questioning Wednesday if a Ninth Circuit case is the right vehicle to challenge the Biden administration’s abandonment of the rule.”

I listened to the argument and tended to agree more with the Law360 assessment.  Nonetheless, one can never tell from oral argument precisely how a case will come out.

Jessisca Gresko for the Associated Press had an interesting observation about the arguments:

“. . . Wednesday’s arguments . . .did underscore one point of agreement between the Trump administration and the Biden administration. In the case of the public charge rule, a single federal judge in Illinois ruled to block the policy nationwide. The Trump administration had criticized similar nationwide injunctions by a single judge blocking a policy nationwide, calling them unlawful. Attorney Brian Fletcher, representing the Biden administration, said that view is shared by the new administration.”

Listen to the oral arguments here.  The transcript is here.

KJ