PHOENIX — The nation's high court this morning refused to resurrect a challenge by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to the Obama administration's deferred action programs.
Without comment, the justices let stand a ruling last year by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that the self-named "toughest sheriff in America'' had no right to sue.
The move is actually one of two victories today for the Obama administration. Separately, the U.S. Supreme Court separately agreed to consider whether a federal judge in Texas acted correctly in enjoining a second "deferred action'' program.
In the Arpaio ruling, appellate Judge Nina Pillard said the sheriff's lawsuit is based on the contention that allowing people who arrived in this country illegally as children to remain without fear of deportation will lead to more crime in Maricopa County and burden his officers and jails. But Pillard, writing for the three-judge panel, said the sheriff's contentions "are unduly speculative'' and "rest on chains of supposition and contradict acknowledged realities.''
And without any proof he or his agency will be harmed, Pillard said there was no basis for a lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed in 2014, challenges both the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and the expanded Deferred Action for Parents of Americans. Both programs allow millions of people here illegally both to remain and work.
Arpaio charged that the programs are "unconstitutional abuses of the president's role in our nation's constitutional architecture, and exceed the powers of the president within the U.S. Constitution.'' And he said even if Congress has granted some power to the president to decide how to enforce immigration laws, these two programs exceed that delegated authority.
But the court never addressed those arguments, saying Arpaio has no legal right to even make them.
