The Supreme Court declined on Monday to rehear a case to restore President Obama’s executive actions on immigration that would spare millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.
The high court rejected the Obama administration’s request to review the justices’ June 23 ruling, which left in place a lower court’s decision to block the executive order, Reuters reported.
Texas spearheaded a legal battle with 25 other states earlier this year against Obama’s plan, arguing that he overstepped his executive authority by bypassing Congress to unilaterally implement the order. Obama announced the plan in 2014 but it never went into effect.
"This is the latest setback to the president’s attempt to expand executive power and another victory for those who believe in the Constitution’s separation of powers and the rule of law," Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told Reuters on Monday.
Obama’s executive order was intended to extend legal status to some 4 million people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children and attended school in the country. The order also established deportation protections for certain undocumented parents of already protected children.
The administration requested in July that the Supreme Court rehear the case once the ninth justice joined the bench. White House spokesman Josh Earnest called on Senate Republicans to confirm a successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
"The inability of the Supreme Court in this situation to reach a decision and put forward a ruling has a negative impact on millions of people in the United States," Earnest told reporters in July.