The U.S. Supreme Court handed Texas a major win on Tuesday by allowing Texas to enforce a law that enables local law enforcement officials to arrest individuals who are suspected of illegally crossing the southern border between the United States and Mexico.
“In a 6-3 decision SCOTUS allows Texas to begin enforcing SB4 that allows the arrest of illegal immigrants,” Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas) tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “We still have to have hearings in the 5th circuit federal court of appeals. But this is clearly a positive development.”
According to The Texas Tribune, the Supreme Court’s ruling to allow Texas to enforce Senate Bill 4 comes just one day after the Supreme Court extended an order by Justice Samuel Alito that temporarily blocked Texas from enforcing the illegal immigration law. Senate Bill 4 allows local law enforcement officials to arrest and impose criminal penalties on illegal immigrants. The legislation also gives state judges the authority to deport illegal immigrants.
The Washington Post reported that a lower court judge initially blocked the enforcement of the state’s law, which was intended to take effect on March 5. The judge claimed that the law was unconstitutional and “could open the door to each state passing its own version of immigration laws.” However, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s decision, leading the Biden administration to appeal its case to the Supreme Court.
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The Supreme Court’s Tuesday ruling will allow Texas to enforce its new illegal immigration law while the litigation continues in the lower courts as President Joe Biden’s administration continues to argue that the state’s legislation is unconstitutional and that it interferes with the federal government’s immigration laws. However, the Texas law could still eventually be blocked if the lower courts rule in favor of the Biden administration.
While the Supreme Court majority did not provide a reasoning behind Tuesday’s decision, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that the lower courts are still expected to make a final decision on the constitutionality of the Texas immigration law.
She wrote, “If a decision does not issue soon, the applicants may return to this court.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Elena Kagan dissented from the majority’s decision Tuesday. In response to the majority’s decision, Sotomayor claimed, “The court gives a green light to a law that will upend the longstanding federal-state balance of power and sow chaos.”
