A Wake-Up Call to Latino Voters on the Importance of Courts
*The rallying call fact in Dolores Huerta’s piece is that during the next president’s first year in office four Supreme Court justices will be 80 years-old, and the average retirement age for the justices is 78. The importance of the Court in recent decisions involving voting rights and immigration is well known, but the influence that the next president will have in the makeup of the court is not discussed as deeply as it should be. This needs to be part of our election debate. VL
By Dolores Huerta, Huffington Post Latino Voices
With the Supreme Court’s significant announcement earlier this week to take up the challenge to President Obama’s executive actions that, if upheld by the Court, could protect millions of immigrants from deportation and keep families together, we’re reminded yet again of the critically important role that the nine justices on the Supreme Court have in deciding the future of our families and communities.
Families across the United States are counting on the Court to follow the law, not play politics, by upholding the President’s actions. Parents should not have to live in fear of being deported and separated from their children. Children should not have to worry when they come home from school whether their father or big sister will still be there. The pain and suffering of millions of immigrants in the United States could be alleviated if the Court applies the law correctly and upholds DACA+ and DAPA, thus clearing the way for so many families to live in the U.S. without fear of deportation.
The only reason that the Supreme Court has the power to make this decision is that Republican politicians challenged the actions. It’s Republican governors and attorneys general leading the politically-calculated, anti-immigrant lawsuit to cater to their far-right base by challenging DACA+ and DAPA.
And there’s a reason GOP politicians turned to the courts: Republicans have spent decades doing everything in their power to fill our judiciary with far-right judges whose decisions help the party’s extreme ideological agenda. Before this case reached the Supreme Court, the Republican coalition took their case to an anti-immigrant judge who consistently misapplies the law, Judge Andrew Hanen of the Federal District Court in Brownsville, Texas. As just one example, the Republican-appointed judge once called it a “dangerous course of action” for the Department of Homeland Security to reunite an undocumented daughter and mother without bringing criminal charges against the mother.
So it’s no surprise that Judge Hanen misapplied the law and blocked DACA+ and DAPA. His decision was then appealed to the 5th Circuit Court, but in a 2-1 decision, they upheld his ruling. It was two Republican-appointed judges in the majority, and a Democratic-appointed judge in the minority.
The dissent of the Democratic-appointed judge, Judge Carolyn King, explained that she viewed the decision as fundamentally wrong. She believes that the her fellow justices misapplied the law, writing . . .
This article waa originally published in Huffington Post Latino Voices.
[Phot by Neil R/Flickr]
