Supreme Court Rules Against Migrants’ Rights To Bond Hearings In Detention
Martin Walsh, September 19, 2022
The U.S. Supreme Court has delivered a crucial ruling against migrants.
The nation’s highest court ruled that illegal aliens detained for six months do not have the legal right to a bond hearing for release.
“The decision addressed two separate cases involving three illegal aliens, two of which were Mexican nationals that entered the U.S. illegally after being previously deported. After they were detained, they filed a putative class action for a bond hearing after six months of detention,” the Daily Caller reported.
“The third illegal alien was from El Salvador and also reentered the country illegally after being previously deported. He also sued in Washington federal court for a bond hearing. The case was brought to the high court under the Trump administration and was inherited by the Biden administration, which continued to pursue the previous administration’s fight,” the outlet added.
In an 8-1 ruling that brought together the conservative and liberal wings of the court, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the law is silent on the point.
“Respondents sought withholding of removal under the INA based on their fear that, if returned to their countries of origin, they would face persecution or torture,” Sotomayer stated in her opinion.
The case was brought to Court under the Trump administration and was inherited by the Biden administration, which continued to pursue the previous administration’s fight.
Biden was criticized for the move, with the American Civil Liberties Union claiming the administration was “decidedly on the wrong side of this fight.”
In an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, the court held that the statute does bar class-wide injunctive relief, leaving open the possibility of injunctive relief for multiple named plaintiffs.
Alito wrote, “It generally prohibits lower courts from entering injunctions that order federal officials to take or to refrain from taking actions to enforce, implement, or otherwise carry out the specified statutory provisions.”
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The Supreme Court also issued its most significant pro-Second Amendment decision in nearly two decades when justices ruled 6-3 that New York’s concealed carry law was unconstitutionally restrictive.
The ruling, experts say, is significant because it means similarly restrictive concealed carry laws, limited primarily to blue states, are also likely to be successfully challenged.
“This decision is a big deal,” MPR noted. “Previously, the court had only said that the Constitution protected the ability to have a gun inside the home for self-defense. In that decision, which came down in 2008, the justices didn’t rule on how guns carried outside the home could be regulated. It took almost 15 years for the justices to come back to that question, but now they have.”
The Second Amendment “protect[s] an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas in the majority opinion for Thursday’s ruling. As such, FiveThirtyEight continued, statues like the one in New York, “which required people who wanted a license to carry a concealed handgun in public to show they have a good reason, are no longer allowed.”
The analysis goes on to predict a “flood” of new litigation in states with similarly restrictively concealed carry laws.
But this major case wasn’t the high court’s only Second Amendment ruling, and in fact, SCOTUS likely opened the door to much of the expected new litigation.
“The Supreme Court said Thursday that gun cases involving restrictions in Hawaii, California, New Jersey and Maryland deserve a new look following its major decision in a gun case last week,” the Western Journal reported Thursday.
“In light of last week’s ruling — which said that Americans have a right to carry a gun outside the home — lower courts should take another look at several cases that had been awaiting action by the high court, the court said. Those cases include ones about high-capacity magazines, an assault weapons ban and a state law that limits who can carry a gun outside the home,” the outlet reported, noting that by sending the cases back to lower courts, these laws will now get a second look under the new standard applied in Thomas’ majority decision.
The outlet adds:
One of the cases the justices sent back to a lower court Thursday involved a Hawaii statute similar to New York’s. In that case, a panel of 11 judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in 2021 that the right to “keep and bear arms” in the Constitution’s Second Amendment “does not guarantee an unfettered, general right to openly carry arms in public for individual self-defense.” But the high court said in its latest gun case that the Constitution protects “an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” A lower court will now have to revisit the Hawaii ruling.
SCOTUS also instructed federal appeals courts to take a new look at laws in California and New Jersey that put limits on the number of rounds a magazine can hold.
In 2018, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed Democrat-passed legislation that limits magazines to 10 rounds of ammunition rather than the 15-round limit that had been in place since 1990.
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