The Supreme Court on Monday extended a temporary block on a new Texas immigration law that is being challenged by the Biden administration.
In an order issued by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, the court again imposed a temporary freeze on a lower court decision. The court said the law would remain on hold “pending further order” of the court.
The law was originally due to go into effect on March 10, but Alito has now stepped in on three occasions to ensure the lower court ruling remains on hold.
His most recent order was due to expire on Monday evening, meaning the law would have gone into effect absent Supreme Court action.
The ruling is now blocked indefinitely, giving all nine justices additional time to determine what next steps to take.
See here for the previous update. We’ll just have to see what happens next, and it could be weeks or months before that happens. If you’re wondering what it means that this time the stay is indefinite while the previous ones had been only for a few days, I’ll let Prof. Vladeck explain:
And a friendly reminder that only one of the other eight justices regularly does what Alito does—putting an arbitrary time limit on administrative stays.
The other justices issue indefinite administrative stays, one big advantage of which is to avoid this kind of deadline drama.
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) 2:44 PM – 18 March 2024
Here are the orders (and what he should’ve done in the first place):
— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) 4:11 PM – 18 March 2024
In other words, it was just Alito being Alito. At least now he’s done the normal thing. We’ll wait for the next move.
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