Supreme Court to weigh future of DACA

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to review President Donald Trump’s decision to end a program protecting illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children. The Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program shields about 700,000 immigrants from deportation by allowing them to apply for renewable, two-year protected status. In September 2017, Trump ordered a phaseout of the program, calling it executive overreach. Federal judges have ordered that DACA remain in place while lawsuits over it make their way through the courts.

The Supreme Court bundled three DACA cases and will hear oral arguments during its next term, which begins in October. The justices will likely reach a decision in the spring or summer of 2020, right in the heat of the presidential campaign.

In addition to the consolidated DACA case, the Supreme Court agreed to hear several other cases next term.

The justices will review a lower-court decision that religious school students’ participation in a Montana tax credit scholarship program violates the Blaine Amendment, which prevents public funding of religious schools. The court will also hear a case regarding the “Bridgegate” scandal that engulfed former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s administration when officials were accused of closing lanes in 2013 to create traffic jams on the George Washington Bridge between Manhattan and Fort Lee, N.J., as political retribution against the Fort Lee mayor. Christie denied knowledge of the plot and fired two aides. One, Bridget Kelly, is challenging her 13-month prison sentence, maintaining that the lane closures were part of a traffic study, not a political plan. Another official embroiled in the scandal decided not to appeal his 18-month sentence.