Ted Olson, with Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, speaking outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington after oral arguments in the consolidated cases Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, on Tuesday, November 11, 2019.
Immigration: Dept. of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Ted Olson argued against the Trump administration’s move to end the Obama-era program Deferred Action of Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, benefiting some 700,000 individuals who arrived in the U.S. as minors. The case doesn’t test the merits of the program but, rather, whether Trump agency officials took lawful steps to unwind the program. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Neil Gorsuch both raised questions at the Nov. 12 argument confronting the Trump administration’s justifications. Roberts at one point asked U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco, “What if the attorney general said he, in his exercise of prosecutorial discretion, was not going to enforce any of the immigration laws? Would that still be non-reviewable?” Francisco said an exception would apply to that scenario, which he described as a “complete abdication of authority.” California Solicitor General Michael Mongan, making his high court debut, argued for Democratic-led states in support of DACA.
