Federal appellate court rules against Obama immigration program

On Monday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana ruled, 2-1, against President Obama's executive initiative to shield up to five million illegal immigrants from deportation. In a 135-page ruling, Judge Jerry E. Smith, writing for the majority, agreed with U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Texas, who'd backed the 26 states suing the Obama administration, concurring that the effort to defer immigration action against certain immigrant parents of U.S. citizens would harm states by making them pay for extra driver's license services and that Obama had failed to follow correct procedures for implementing his executive action.

The White House had been expecting the decision to go against Obama, in part because the same judges had rejected their request for an emergency stay in May and partly, The New York Times explains, "because of the high number of judges in that circuit who were appointed by Republican presidents." True to form, the two judges in the majority were appointed by Republicans, and the third judge, Jimmy Carter appointee Carolyn King, wrote a tough dissent accusing her fellow jurists — including Judge Hanen — of ignoring the evidence and ruling based on "conjecture, intuition, or preconception."

The Obama administration and immigrant advocates have high hopes that the Supreme Court will rule in their favor, and had mainly been worried that the Fifth Circuit would delay its ruling so long the high court wouldn't rule on the case until Obama was out of office. Now, if the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case next year and decides in Obama's favor, the initiative will have a few months to take root before Obama's term ends. "Once the green light is given," said Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, "it will make it that much more difficult for any administration, Republican or Democrat, to undo the program."

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