The highest ranking Democratic lawmaker overseeing the judicial branch described a Tuesday ruling striking down President Obama’s immigration executive order as being the result of a crooked procedure.
The decision, which came from Pittsburgh-based US District Court Judge Arthur Schwab, was called into disrepute by outgoing Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). Leahy said the ruling was “very unusual.”
“No party in the case raised such a challenge nor were there briefings or arguments on that issue,” he said in a statement. “I strongly disagree with the court’s reasoning but the process is also suspect.”
The decision, which has no immediate impact, is the first on the Constitutionality of the President’s November executive order on immigration. More judicial review will soon yield “many court opinions” on the decree, Leahy noted.
“I understand that members of the House of Representatives recently joined an amicus brief in another case,” he said. “I wish they would put that energy into passing the bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill the Senate sent them more than a year and a half ago.”
Schwab, a George W. Bush-appointee, has a history of engaging in unusual conduct, the Huffington Post reported after his decision. He ruled Tuesday that the executive order–a stay on deportation applying to some 4.7 million undocumented immigrants–“goes beyond prosecutorial discretion” and therefore violates a clause of Constitution which requires the President to “faithfully execute laws passed by Congress.” Federal prosecutors, however, had argued that the President’s edict on civil matters did not apply to their case–criminal proceedings against a once-deported 42-year old Honduran who had pleaded guilty to illegally re-entering the US.
