Supreme Court rules against immigrants in detention case
By Jessica Gresko
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday against a group of immigrants in a case about the government’s power to detain them after they’ve committed crimes but finished their sentences.
The issue in the case before the justices had to do with the detention of noncitizens who have committed a broad range of crimes that make them deportable. Immigration law tells the government to pick those people up when they are released from custody and then hold them while an immigration court decides whether they should be deported.
But those affected by the law aren’t always picked up immediately and are sometimes not detained until years later. In the case before the Supreme Court, a group of mostly green card holders argued that unless they’re picked up essentially within a day of being released, they should be entitled to a hearing where they can argue that they aren’t a danger to the community and are not likely to flee. If a judge were to agree, they would not have to remain in custody while their deportation case goes forward.
That’s the same hearing rule that applies to other noncitizens the government is trying to deport.
But the Supreme Court disagreed with the immigrants’ interpretation of federal law in a 5-4 ruling that divided the court along ideological lines. Looking at a statutory provision enacted by Congress in 1996, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “neither the statute’s text nor its structure” supported the immigrants’ argument. The court’s conservative justices sided with the Trump administration, which argued as the Obama administration did, against hearings for those convicted of crimes and affected by the law.
The case before the justices involved a class-action lawsuit brought by noncitizens in California and a similar class-action lawsuit brought in the state of Washington. One of the lead plaintiffs, Mony Preap, has been a lawful permanent resident of the United States since 1981 and has two convictions for possession of marijuana. He was released from prison in 2006 but was not taken into immigration custody until 2013.
Preap won in lower courts, and the government was ordered to provide him and other class members a bond hearing. Preap has since won his deportation case.
The case is 16-1363 Nielsen v. Preap.
Trump’s high court picks on opposite sides in 2 cases
By Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s two Supreme Court appointees were on opposite sides of two of three cases that the justices decided Tuesday.
The two new justices have solidified conservative control of the Supreme Court, but they do not march in lockstep, at least in the small corners of the court’s work dealing with Indian treaties and maritime law.
In one case, Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the court’s liberal justices in ruling that a Washington state Indian tribe doesn’t have to pay a state fuel tax. Gorsuch said an 1855 treaty makes a “handful of modest promises” to the Yakama Nation, including the right to move goods to market freely.
Holding the parties to the terms of the treaty that ceded 10 million acres to the United States “is the least we can do.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh dissented, arguing that the treaty merely gives tribal members the same right to travel as everyone else.
The other case involved a lawsuit by survivors of two Navy veterans over their exposure to asbestos. Kavanaugh wrote the court’s opinion that allows the suit against manufacturers of equipment used on Navy ships to continue. Kavanaugh wrote that the makers of pumps, turbines and blowers that required asbestos insulation to operate properly should have warned about the health dangers of asbestos exposure. This is so, Kavanaugh wrote, even though the companies did not manufacture or sell the asbestos to the Navy.
Gorsuch dissented. The manufacturers “are at risk of being held responsible retrospectively for failing to warn about other people’s products,” Gorsuch wrote.
The liberal justices and Chief Justice John Roberts also were in the majority. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined Gorsuch’s dissent.
The lineup in the Indian treaty case was even more interesting. Gorsuch’s opinion was joined only by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the leader of the court’s liberal wing. The other three liberal justices voted for the same outcome, but with different reasoning.
Trump nominated Gorsuch in 2017 to fill the seat Senate Republicans held open for more than a year following Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in 2016. The Senate refused to act on President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland.
Kavanaugh joined the court in October, following tumultuous hearings that included an allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman as a teenager. Kavanaugh denied the allegation. Kavanaugh replaced Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired.
Tuesday’s other case demonstrated the more common alliance of the conservative justices. In a case involving immigrants, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were with the other three conservatives in ruling that the Trump administration has the authority to detain people who have finished serving criminal sentences while it decides whether to deport them.
The four liberal justices dissented.
