The U.S. Supreme Court granted the administration of President Joe Biden a significant victory in a high-profile case that has been closely followed for months.

The nation’s highest court ruled, 8-1, that Republican-led states lack the legal standing to challenge a policy limiting federal immigration enforcement. The justices ruled that Republican states lacked the legal standing to contest a change in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s deportation and arrest priorities for illegal immigrants.

“Supreme Court upholds provision of federal law that prohibits encouragement of illegal immigration
The ruling is a major victory for President Joe Biden and the White House, who have consistently argued the need to prioritize who they detain and deport given limited resources. By ruling against the states, the court tightened the rules concerning when states may challenge federal policies with which they disagree,” CNN reported.

Justice Samuel Alito was the lone dissenting justice. Brett Kavanaugh authored the majority opinion.

“In Sum, the States have brought an extraordinarily unusual lawsuit,” Kavanaugh wrote, in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “They want a federal court to order the Executive Branch to alter its arrest policies to make more arrests. Federal courts have not traditionally entertained that kind of lawsuit; indeed, the States cite no precedent for a lawsuit like this.”

In a concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, concluded that the states also lacked reasoning, but for different reasons than the majority opinion.

“At the heart of the dispute was a September 2021 memo from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that laid out priorities for the apprehension and removal of certain non-citizens, reversing efforts by former President Donald Trump to increase deportations,” CNN reported.

“In his memo, Mayorkas stated that there are approximately 11 million undocumented or otherwise removable non-citizens in the country and that the United States cannot apprehend and seek to remove all of them. As such, the Department of Homeland Security sought to prioritize those who pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security,” the outlet added.

This is the second significant ruling involving the Biden administration this week.

In a separate case, the justices banded together to issue a 9-0 ruling to limit “the reach of the federal Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act, unanimously rebuffing the Biden administration’s efforts to prosecute a man already convicted of Medicaid fraud with a separate charge of aggravated identity theft arising out of the same fraud case.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored the decision in Dubin v. United States, while Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a concurring opinion. For violations, the Identity Theft Penalty Enhancement Act mandates a two-year prison sentence.

More on this story via Conservative Brief:

When President George W. Bush signed the law in 2004, he said it established the federal “offense of aggravated identity theft” to ensure that someone convicted of that crime would receive jail time “for stealing a person’s good name.” CONTINUE READING…