In Re United States
The Supreme Court stepped into a discovery fight over the Trump administration's move to end the DACA program for young immigrants, ruling that a trial judge should have first decided whether the decision to end DACA could be reviewed by courts at all before ordering the government to turn over a broader set of internal records.
The Court vacated the Ninth Circuit's refusal to block that records order and sent the case back, saying the government's threshold arguments about reviewability and jurisdiction needed to be resolved first because they could make the records dispute unnecessary.
“This order does not suggest any view on the merits of respondents’ claims or the Government’s defenses”
The Court clarifies it is not ruling on whether ending DACA is lawful.
How it got here: A district court ordered the government to expand its administrative record; the Ninth Circuit denied mandamus relief; the government asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
The Case in Depth
What happened
The Department of Homeland Security's Acting Secretary announced plans to end DACA, a program protecting certain young immigrants from deportation, by March 2018. Immigrants and others sued in federal court in California, arguing the rescission violated federal administrative law and constitutional due process and equal protection guarantees. The dispute here concerns how much of the government's internal decision-making record must be disclosed to the people suing.
The question before the Court
Before deciding whether the government had to hand over its full internal record on ending DACA, should a court have first resolved whether the decision could be reviewed at all?
Why it matters
The ruling doesn't decide whether DACA can be rescinded, but it pauses a lower court's demand for a wide swath of internal government communications until bigger legal questions are answered first. That protects the government from potentially unnecessary, burdensome disclosure while the underlying DACA lawsuits continue in the lower courts.
What changes now
The case returns to the Ninth Circuit, which must ensure the district court first rules on the government's threshold arguments about reviewability and jurisdiction, potentially certifying that ruling for an immediate appeal. Only afterward would courts consider whether a narrower version of the records order is needed. The underlying DACA lawsuits, including the motion to dismiss and request for a preliminary injunction, continue unaffected by this order.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly said this order does not suggest any view on the merits of the challengers' claims or the government's defenses, and does not mean the district court's rulings on the pending motions to dismiss or for a preliminary injunction should be delayed.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court focused on the proper sequencing of litigation: when a party raises threshold arguments that could eliminate the need for further proceedings, courts should generally resolve those threshold questions first.
- Here, the government argued that the decision to end DACA was 'committed to agency discretion' under a federal law that shields certain agency decisions from judicial review, and separately that immigration law stripped the district court of jurisdiction to hear the case at all.
- The Court reasoned that if either threshold argument succeeded, it would likely eliminate the need for the district court to review a fuller administrative record, since there would be nothing left to review on the merits.
- Because the district court instead ordered the government to complete the record before resolving those threshold questions, the Court concluded the district court should have paused that records order and decided the threshold arguments first.
- The Court left open how the record dispute should ultimately be handled, directing the lower courts to consider narrower amendments to the record only after the threshold questions are resolved, and to let the government argue privilege before being forced to disclose any specific document.