As justices turn blind eye to federal flubs, Gorsuch sides with liberal wing

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court ruled against an Indian immigrant facing deportation on Monday morning, finding that federal courts can’t review certain executive-branch findings to determine if a noncitizen should be deported. 

Justice Amy Coney Barrett penned the decision for a 5-4 majority, with Justice Neil Gorsuch and the liberal wing of the court writing critically in dissent that the opinion shields the government from “the embarrassment of having to correct even its most obvious errors.” 

“Today, the Court holds that a federal bureaucracy can make an obvious factual error, one that will result in an individual’s removal from this country, and nothing can be done about it,” the Trump-appointed Gorsuch wrote. “No court may even hear the case. It is a bold claim promising dire consequences for countless lawful immigrants.” 

While Gorsuch was joined in the dissent by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Barrett was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh.

The case comes from Pankajkumar Patel, who is facing deportation to his home country of India because of an error on a driver’s license application. Patel — who lives in Georgia and has otherwise been in the United States legally for almost 30 years — applied for an immigrant visa for work and was waiting on the pending application. When Patel went to renew his driver’s license in 2008, he accidentally checked the box stating he was a citizen. The government then moved to deny Patel’s visa application because he falsely represented himself. 

Patel was placed in removal proceedings and testified before an immigration judge that he had made a mistake on the application and that the mistake was immaterial to his application. The immigration judge ruled against him, however, and he failed to secure reversals from either the Board of Immigration Appeals or the 11th Circuit. 

Barrett writes for the majority Monday that the attorney general has the power to grant relief to Congress’ rules requiring the removal of noncitizens in the U.S., but federal courts have a limited role to play in the process. 

“With an exception for legal and constitutional questions, Congress has barred judicial review of the Attorney General’s decisions denying discretionary relief from removal,” the Trump appointee wrote. “We must decide how far this bar extends — specifically, whether it precludes judicial review of factual findings that underlie a denial of relief. It does.” 

The outcome of the case turned on the scope of the word “judgment” within the regulation that strips courts of jurisdiction to review “any judgment regarding the granting of relief.” The government claims judgment refers specifically to a decision that requires the use of discretion. This would mean some eligibility decisions are reviewable where others are not. Patel agrees with the government in part but disagrees on categorizing determinations as discretionary or nondiscretionary. 

The court’s majority favored neither the government nor Patel’s argument and instead adopted an interpretation from an amicus brief. 

“The provision does not restrict itself to certain kinds of decisions,” Barrett wrote. “Rather, it prohibits review of any judgment regarding the granting of relief under §1255 and the other enumerated provisions.” (Emphasis in original.)

Gorsuch said the case asked the court if federal courts could review and correct decisions based on factual errors and the majority’s ruling leaves courts powerless to do so. 

“On the majority’s telling, courts are powerless to correct bureaucratic mistakes like these no matter how grave they may be,” Gorsuch wrote. “It is an eye-catching conclusion.” 

Gorsuch disagrees with the majority’s reliance on an amicus brief that makes arguments for the government that the government itself did not advance. 

“How does the majority manage to reach such an unlikely conclusion,” Gorsuch wrote. “It depends on a Court-appointed amicus who offers arguments for the government that even the government refuses to advance on its own behalf.”

Claiming the majority’s ruling is at war with the evidence presented before them, Gorsuch said the decision will prevent any chance to correct agency errors in processing green-card applications outside the removal context. 

“It is a conclusion that turns an agency once accountable to the rule of law into an authority unto itself,” Gorsuch wrote. “Perhaps some would welcome a world like that. But it is hardly the world Congress ordained.” 

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the ruling. Ira Jay Kurzban, an attorney with Kurzban, Kurzban representing Patel, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Follow @KelseyReichmann

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