A federal judge in Ohio ruled against the Trump administration Monday, citing bigoted comments President Trump and Vice President JD Vance made about immigrants.

U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley ordered the White House to unfreeze immigrants’ benefit applications, citing Trump and Vance’s “outright hostility towards immigrants, both before and after the 2024 presidential elections.” These applications include filings for work authorization and green cards from people in the U.S. from countries including Burma, Canada, Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Tanzania, and Venezuela.

“Their ire appears focused on immigrants from countries in the Caribbean, South America, Africa, and Asia,” Marbley, nominated to the federal bench by President Clinton in 1997, wrote.

  • litchralee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    29 days ago

    It’s refreshing to see a Preliminary Injunction (PI) granted against the federal administration. As a reminder, a PI requires four legs.

    Courts consider four factors “to be balanced” in evaluating whether to issue a preliminary injunction: (1) “whether the movant has a strong likelihood of success on the merits”; (2) whether the movant would suffer irreparable injury absent the injunction”; (3) whether the injunction would cause substantial harm to others”; and (4) whether the public interest would be served by the issuance of an injunction.”

    By no means is the case over, but while it drags out in court – or if the USCIS and DHS declined to proceed after getting the headlines they wanted, and seeing the judicial writing on the wall – the policy is blocked and benefit applications will continue to be processed.

    What is notable is that, in addition to the usual thoroughness for the first leg, the court found that for the fourth leg, the public interest did not side with the government. Normally, when the government is a party, it is a rebuttable presumption that the government is acting in the public interest, because they’re the the people’s government. But even if in the public interest, following the law is also in the public interest.

    The Government has not shown how its national security interests could be harmed by requiring Defendants to adhere to the law—specifically, the requirements of the APA, the INA, and the regulations that govern USCIS. By contrast, there is an overriding public interest in ensuring that Government agencies adhere to the letter of the law.

    Now, any PI is subject to being appealed due to supposed error on any of those legs, but whereas the Circuit Courts might focus their review on the sufficiency of the four legs and explaining their work and finally returning the case to the District Court, we’ve seen how the currently composed Supreme Court is prepared to complete vacate orders and injunctions, without explanation, returning the case to the District Court to continue but with no indication of what the error was.

    This, rather wastefully, usually means that when the real meat of the case is adjudicated, the trial judge will have no idea whether the initial analysis in law (the first leg) was off the mark or not. Inevitably, the case would be appealed up the chain, and even then, there’s no guarantee that the Supreme Court will give any additional guidance for the lower judges.

    So even while this is clearly a short-term reprieve for the benefit applicants, the eventual course of this patently ridiculous system will mire it all in abundant confusion. One of the purposes of a multi-tier judicial system is that the top court should’t have to be micromanaging every case, even those of profound importance. Appeals are not supposed to be commonplace, since judges and appeals courts are supposed to be competent at reading the law and applying prior jurisprudence. The very fact that this current Supreme Court is nosing into so many cases is an indictment of themselves, failing to give guidance to their colleagues in the lower courts.

    To the appellants, this is a massive waste of time and money. To the lawyers, this is an embarrassment. To the public, a grand shame. And to the justices, an indelible mark.