President Obama said during a press conference Thursday that he can no longer take additional executive actions on immigration for the remainder of his presidency, appearing to admit defeat shortly after the Supreme Court blocked his 2014 plan to prevent millions of illegal immigrants from being deported and give them work permits instead.
"On the specifics of immigration, I don’t anticipate that there are additional executive actions we can take," Obama told reporters at the White House. "We can implement what we’ve already put in place that is not affected by this decision, but we have to follow now what has been ruled on in the Fifth Circuit [Court of Appeals] because the Supreme Court could not resolve the issue."
Obama was referring to the Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday that halted the president‘s executive order that bypassed Congress. The court was deadlocked with a 4-4 vote, which means that the judgment of the lower court, which blocked the president’s action, "is affirmed by an equally divided Court."
The executive action in question would shield more than four million illegal immigrants from deportation and make them eligible for some federal and state benefits.
Texas and 25 other states sued the Obama administration, arguing the president did not have the authority to institute such large-scale changes without legislation from Congress.
Obama said during Thursday’s press conference that he had no choice but to take executive action at the time because House Republicans were not passing legislation to address the issue. He added that the administration must abide by the court ruling until a new president gets a nominee approved by the Senate to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who passed away in February.
"We’re going to have to abide by that ruling until an election and a confirmation of a ninth justice of the Supreme Court so that they can break this tie," Obama said. "Because we’ve always said that we are going to do what we can lawfully through executive action, but we can’t go beyond that. And we’ve budded up about as far as we can on this particular topic."