Excerpt from a Reuters explanation of the tricky technicality forming the basis of the Federal court ruling out of Texas that blocks President Obama’s immigration executive orders from moving forward:
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen avoided diving into sweeping constitutional questions or tackling presidential powers head-on. Instead, he faulted Obama for not giving public notice of his plans.
The failure to do so, Hanen wrote, was a violation of the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act, which requires notice in a publication called the Federal Register as well as an opportunity for people to submit views in writing.
There’s a longer, more spelled out version further down in the article.
The other point of interest/concern in this story, not commented upon in the article, is that the lawsuit was brought by 26 state governments. As our writer Sasha examined in an article in December 2014, Republican State Attorneys General have been repeatedly acting in concert to file coordinated, mass lawsuits against the Obama Administration on every conceivable issue. Executive orders and actions have been a particularly favored target.
I don’t know exactly which states are involved in this particular, but I’m betting it’s most (if not all) of the states with Republican Attorneys General (since they control about that many at the moment).
US-Mexico border fence at Tijuana and San Diego by the Pacific Ocean. (Credit: JamesReyes)
