By Joelle Fredman, NASFAA Staff Reporter

A federal appeals court Thursday ruled that the Trump administration could not immediately end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. This decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s temporary ruling that the program must remain intact.

In a unanimous decision, the three-judge panel said it rejected the Trump administration’s claims that the courts cannot review immigration policies put forth by the executive branch.   

“To be clear: we do not hold that DACA could not be rescinded as an exercise of executive branch discretion. We hold only that here, where the executive did not make a discretionary choice to end DACA—but rather acted based on an erroneous view of what the law required—the rescission was arbitrary and capricious under settled law,” they wrote.

This ruling makes it more likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately hear this argument, according to The Washington Post. The Trump administration sent a request earlier this week for the case to come before the Supreme Court.

Today’s court win adds to several courts that have now found the Trump administration’s termination of #DACA was likely unlawful. These legal victories are welcomed, but they offer only a temporary reprieve. Dreamers are still in need of permanent protections. 4/4 #DefendDACA

— National Immigration Law Center (@NILC_org) November 8, 2018

“Today’s decision is a tremendous victory for our young immigrant Dreamers and the rule of law,”  California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a press release. "In California and across our nation, Dreamers significantly enrich our communities as scholars, entrepreneurs, first responders and much more. This fight, of course, is far from over. We will continue to defend Dreamers and DACA all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.”

BREAKING & Another Victory: Appeals Court rules that Trump’s killing of #DACA was wrong. Renewals will remain open. The 9th Circuit ruled that the Trump administration’s decision to rescind DACA was "arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise not in accordance with law."#HereToStay

— United We Dream Action (@UNITEDWEDREAM) November 8, 2018

Becerra was part of the group of attorneys general that filed the lawsuit that was upheld Thursday. The University of California, which joined in the case as well, said in a statement that the decision “is yet another strong message from our nation’s courts that the government’s attempt to rescind DACA was unlawful.”

“The government’s only justification for rescinding DACA—that the program itself is legally flawed—is unfounded. Now that the appellate court has definitively rejected this argument, the university calls on the administration to stop its efforts to rescind the program,” the group wrote.

Publication Date: 11/9/2018

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