Citizens of countries across the globe are either shocked or ecstatic that the United Kingdom decided to remove itself from the European Union Thursday night. Never mind that the U.K. was shouldering the bulk of the financial burden of the obligation, or that we as Americans made the #BREXIT cool all the back in 1776 (Now you know why we got so upset over taxation without representation, England),
Somehow between all the articles about the E.U and Britons desperately Googling what it was, Donald Trump’s strange golf course speech, and Kim, Kanye, and T. Swift naked together on an album cover (seriously, look it up. Weird right?), we as Americans missed two major Supreme Court rulings we should know more about. I'm going to sum them up here for you.
1. UNITED STATES v. TEXAS
Texas, back at it again with the lawsuits. Texas and two dozen other states, mostly led by Republican governors, sued the Obama administration for failing to enforce the nation’s immigration laws after the president moved to expand DACA and create DAPA in late 2014.
DACA was introduced by the Obama administration in June 2012. It originally allowed some illegal and undocumented immigrants who entered the country before their 16th birthday and before June 2007 to get an exemption from deportation and a renewable 2-year work permit.
DAPA was introduced by the Obama administration in November 2014, and it was a program to grant deferred action status to some undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. since 2010 and have children who are either American citizens or lawful permanent residents of the United States.
In a split decision, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling. In this case, it overthrew the immigration policy created by the Obama Administration on three grounds, mainly that the deportation deferral programs in question violate federal immigration law and/or the Constitution. So what? Well, that's the tricky part. Although this ruling could return as many as 4 million illegal aliens to their native countries, the DHS only has the funding to deport about 400,000. The real defeat/victory, depending on your stance on the issue, is the precedent that seemed to say: " If you want immigration reform, use the balances of power we have, and pass a law."
2. Fisher v. University of Texas
Thursday’s case was brought by Abigail Fisher, a white woman who said the university had denied her admission based on her race. She has since graduated from Louisiana State University. She claimed that she had better grades than minority students who were accepted to UT and that they were accepted due to their race.
Regardless of the veracity of her claims, the court ruled on the principle that admissions officials may continue to consider race as one factor among many in ensuring a diverse student body. Affirmative action supporters saw this as a landmark victory. “No decision since Brown v. Board of Education has been as important as Fisher will prove to be in the long history of racial inclusion and educational diversity,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, referring to the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision striking down segregated public schools.
However, in this case, the dissenting judge Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr said something worth considering. “What is at stake is whether university administrators may justify systematic racial discrimination simply by asserting that such discrimination is necessary to achieve “the educational benefits of diversity,” without explaining — much less proving — why the discrimination is needed or how the discriminatory plan is well crafted to serve its objectives.”
So there you have it, race and immigration actions, vital to shaping American policy, swallowed up in the flashy news about candidates and their words about the issues.
