A court hearing has been set for April 17 on whether a temporary hold on President Barack Obama’s immigration executive action should be lifted, a federal appeals court announced Tuesday.
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The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said each side will have an hour to make their arguments about the injunction during the April hearing.
The scheduling of the hearing was part of a court order that granted a request by the Justice Department to expedite its appeal of Hanen’s Feb. 16 ruling.
The Justice Department had asked Hanen to lift the injunction while the case was appealed to the 5th Circuit. But Hanen put that request on hold until he heard from federal prosecutors about allegations that the U.S. government had misled him about the implementation of part of the immigration plan.
During a court hearing last week, a Justice Department attorney apologized to Hanen for any confusion about how more than 108,000 people received three-year reprieves from deportation before the judge made a decision on the injunction.
Hanen has yet to decide if he will issue sanctions against the Justice Department if he decides that the U.S. government had begun implementing an expansion of a program that protects young immigrants from deportation if they were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
Here’s the Chron story about the allegations that the feds had misled Judge Hanen. I have no idea how serious that is. MSNBC adds some details to this story.
In agreeing to fast-track the appeal, the 5th Circuit is signaling that it is taking the timing of the process as a whole very seriously.
“It all shows how the 5th Circuit seems to recognize that it is a very important case,” said Carl Tobias, law professor at the University of Richmond.
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The expedited schedule means those individuals waiting in limbo will get a final decision sooner than what is typically seen in most appeals. But that does not necessarily mean that every step of the process is on the fast-track. Melissa Crow, legal director at the American Immigration Council, said she was surprised to see that the appellate court would be hearing hour-long oral arguments from both sides of the case before making a determination on the emergency stay.
“It is highly unusual for courts to schedule oral arguments on requests for an emergency stay and it’s even more unusual for each side to have an hour of legal arguments,” Crow said.
Tobias agreed, calling the hearing “extremely rare.” Pointing to same-sex marriage appeals as examples of similarly important, time-sensitive cases that impact a number of people, Tobias said courts in the past have held no hearings, left very little briefing time and made very quick decisions. “I think it shows how important the court believes this particular case is,” he said.
Obviously, I’m rooting for the Fifth Circuit to grant the request to lift the injunction, but you never know what you’ll get with them. Politico has more.