NEW ORLEANS, (Reuters) – Two conservative U.S. appeals court judges expressed skepticism yesterday over arguments to lift an injunction blocking President Barack Obama’s efforts to overhaul immigration law without congressional action.
Administration lawyers were in court to ask a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel to lift the injunction, issued in February by a federal judge in Texas, halting the president’s executive action intended to shield 4.7 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.
The programs angered many Republicans who accused the president of executive overreach and granting amnesty to lawbreakers, but drew praise from immigrant rights advocates, more than 100 of whom rallied outside the courthouse in New Orleans during and after the oral arguments.
Judge Jennifer Elrod was the most openly skeptical of the administration’s argument that the executive action conferred no benefits on the undocumented immigrants it covered, but merely granted them provisional relief from prosecution.
What if the administration put out a similar rule that applied to all undocumented immigrants, Elrod asked acting Assistant Attorney General Benjamin Mizer.
“Would that be unlawful?” she asked.
Also expressing misgivings was Judge Jerry Smith, who said a U.S. Supreme Court case in which several states were found to have standing in suing federal environmental regulators over lacking carbon emissions rules would weigh heavily in his judgment of whether Texas had standing in the present case.