The challenge to a Texas judge’s injunction blocking President Obama’s executive action on immigration will be heard today in New Orleans. While many of us held high hopes for the hearing, the appointment of the three-judge panel to hear the appeal was beyond disappointing. Two of the three judges have already ruled against the new DAPA program in a previous hearing. The decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to appoint a hostile panel indicates long-term problems for DAPA in front of that court.
Court watchers say it is unlikely the two judges will change their opinions. In an interview with The Hill, one professor summed up what a lot of us are thinking:
“It’s likely to be a similar result,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law. “It’s unlikely that [the two judges] will change their views.”
There are some hopes that a ruling at the end of the Supreme Court’s term on the ability of states to sue in Federal Court may change the two conservative judges’ opinion, but those are slim hopes.
