Trump Administration Gets Permission to Appeal DACA Ruling

May 1, 2018

A federal district court judge in New York has granted the government’s request to appeal his earlier ruling that plaintiffs seeking to stop the president’s attempted rollback of the Obama-era Deferred Action for Child Arrivals (DACA) immigration policy could cite Trump’s “racially charged” language as part of their case.

In multiple lawsuits that are ongoing across the country and seeking to preserve DACA, district court judges have been split over the issue of whether Trump’s campaign statements support a plausible inference of discriminatory animus as the cause of his efforts to undo DACA. In this case, the judge ruled at the end of March that the “racial slurs” and “epithets” Trump used while campaigning for the presidency and after taking office could be evidence that his attempt to terminate DACA in September was based on animus toward Latinos in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

Repealing DACA, which provides two-year work permits and some protections against deportation for roughly 700,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children, has been a high priority for the Trump administration. However, it has been the subject of multiple legal challenges, which thus far have resulted in at least three rulings against the government in its efforts to end the program. Allowing the Justice Department to appeal the ruling in this case will give the Second Circuit Court of Appeals the opportunity to offer guidance regarding whether Trump’s inflammatory statements can be used as evidence as the legal battles over the status of DACA continue.

See State of New York et al v. Donald Trump et al on Justia Dockets

Additional Reading

Judge Permits Government to Appeal DACA Lawsuit, The New York Times, April 30, 2018

Citing Trump’s ‘Racial Slurs,’ Judge Says Suit to Preserve DACA Can Continue, The New York Times, March 29, 2018