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Comment by epistasis | Hacker News Reader

If the Trump administration had a patch for the Linux kernel, they'd try to submit it by directly emailing Linus a Word document with vague suggestions. Or if they found somebody particularly competent, perhaps a word document that contained code.

This is the level of legal incompetence that the administration uses in almost every arena where they make lots of noise.

It should be no surprise that they fail at very basic levels before any grander legal question can be debated.

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DACA was also a Word document emailed to Linus, but it's now upstream.

If that were true, and given the huge amount of opposition that DACA faces from well funded political foes, wouldn't there have been a successful legal challenge against DACA at some point, prior to Trump's incompetent attempts? If it was as easy to shoot down as Trump's challenge, I would be shocked that nobody had done it yet.

I haven't been able to find such a challenge. As far as I can tell, the only lawsuit challenging the creation of DACA as a violation of the APA was filed by that sheriff dude in Arizona and thrown out because the lower courts ruled he didn't have standing. It looks like the States that oppose DACA didn't bother to challenge it on these grounds because the Trump administration rescinded it.

First, I'm not convinced that the original DACA was as bad as emailing Linus a Word kernel patch. But if it were, I can think of another reason that nobody bothered to challenge it: because it's wildly popular and would be politically disastrous to challenge it and tear it down.

As somebody who believes that this court is more motivated by partisan political concerns than legal reasoning, it seems likely to me that Roberts ruled against this not out of true legal principle, but because it would be so wildly unpopular in an election year that he doesn't like the consequences.

There are many realities that seem plausible here.

It looks like I was wrong (didn't realize how many Texas v United States cases there were just about DACA and conflated them) and there was (is?) such a challenge:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-txsd-1_18-cv-00...

States challenged DACA as a violation of the APA and the Take Care clause of the Constitution. The judge argued that it probably was illegal, but denied their request for a preliminary injunction because of all the negative consequences. I haven't been able to find a final ruling on this case, not sure if it has been decided or is still pending.

EDIT: yep, still pending. It was apparently waiting for this Supreme Court ruling before moving forward:

https://www.courtlistener.com/reca/gov.uscourts.txsd.150168/...

So the cart's a bit ahead of the cart I suppose - the Trump administration's rescission was unlawful, but the legaity of the original creation is still not decided.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/us/supreme-court-immigrat...

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