ObamaCare Ruling May Stop Obama's Immigration Action

The Justice Department on Friday urged a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals panel to lift a lower-court injunction and let it start granting temporary legal presence to up to 5 million illegal immigrants.

The Obama administration is expected to lose this round because two Republican-appointed judges on the three-judge panel rejected an initial request to lift the injunction in May, writing that "the government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its appeal."
The case could be on a fast track to the Supreme Court, with a decision due in 2016. But last month's King v. Burwell opinion helping to preserve President Obama's signature health care law suggests that the justices may not uphold his administration's aggressive legal interpretations. That includes his controversial executive action to grant de facto legal status to millions of illegal aliens.The ObamaCare case hinged on whether the IRS was justified in providing tax subsidies to people in states that had never set up their own health insurance exchange. Conservatives argued that the plain text authorized subsidies only via an "Exchange established by the State" and not by the federal Healthcare.gov.
The Obama administration argued that the law's context was clear. But if the justices deemed the text unclear, then they should rely on the "Chevron deference" precedent. In the 1984 case Chevron v. NRDC, the court ruled that it should accept the executive branch agency's interpretation of what Congress meant as long as it is plausible.
'Deep Significance' Test
That was too much for Justice Anthony Kennedy, who called it "a drastic step" to let the IRS decide whether to award billions of dollars in subsidies without clear congressional intent.
Chief Justice John Roberts, in his opinion siding with the administration, agreed: The availability of billions in subsidies "is a question of deep 'economic and political significance'; had Congress wished to assign that question to an agency, it surely would have done so expressly."
Instead, Roberts wrote, it was up for the judicial branch to determine the statute's meaning.
"The Court's invocation of the 'major questions' doctrine, and various justices' increasingly vocal skepticism of judicial deference doctrines in general, could prove significant," said Adam White, counsel at Boyden Gray & Associates focused on regulatory law. "Certainly as to the immigration controversy, but also other unilateral actions by this administration, such as environmental regulation and Internet regulation."
Reasonable Discretion?
The Obama administration has said its deferred action program granting three-year legal presence is a reasonable form of the prosecutorial discretion to which it is entitled. Further, granting legal presence doesn't automatically legalize employment. That step is allowed based on prior legislation that permitted people applying for asylum and others to get work authorization as their status was determined.