Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of Univ. of Cal.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration's 2017 cancellation of DACA was legally flawed, because officials failed to consider whether they could keep the deportation protections in place while ending associated benefits, and ignored the disruption to hundreds of thousands of young immigrants who had built their lives around the program.
The ruling keeps DACA alive for now but does not save it permanently — the government can try again with a properly reasoned explanation. It establishes that agencies must weigh the human costs of reversing major policies that large numbers of people have relied on.
How it got here: Three federal district courts blocked the DACA rescission; the Ninth Circuit affirmed in the lead case; the government petitioned the Supreme Court before the other two circuits ruled, and the Court consolidated all three cases.
The Case in Depth
What happened
In 2012, the Obama administration launched DACA, allowing roughly 700,000 people brought to the United States as children to avoid deportation and apply for work permits. In September 2017, the Trump administration's Acting Secretary of Homeland Security ended the program, relying on the Attorney General's conclusion that DACA was unlawful. DACA recipients, universities, states, and civil rights groups promptly sued, arguing the cancellation was legally deficient under the law governing federal agencies.
The question before the Court
Did the Trump administration follow proper legal procedures when it cancelled DACA, the program protecting nearly 700,000 young immigrants brought to the United States as children from deportation?
The Court's answer
No — not with the explanation provided. The Court ruled that Acting Secretary Duke's 2017 memo violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the law requiring federal agencies to give reasoned explanations for their decisions. Duke's memo concluded DACA was illegal because it extended benefits like work permits and Social Security eligibility without statutory authority — but that illegality finding applied only to the benefits, not to the core decision to simply stop deporting people. Duke had the discretion to cancel benefits while keeping deportation protection in place, but her memo never considered that option. The memo also made no mention of the hardship to hundreds of thousands of people who had reorganized their lives around DACA. Both failures made the cancellation arbitrary and capricious.
The Court separately rejected the claim that the rescission was motivated by racial animus against Latino immigrants, finding the evidence insufficient. DHS retains full authority to end DACA — it just must do so with a more thorough and honest explanation.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Some 700,000 people brought to the United States as children — who had enrolled in college, started careers, bought homes, and started families under DACA — keep their deportation protections while the case returns to the agency. More broadly, the ruling sets a meaningful floor: any administration seeking to reverse a major policy that people have built their lives around must explain its reasoning carefully and honestly weigh the harm to those who relied on it.
What changes now
The cases return to the agency, which may try again to rescind DACA with a properly reasoned explanation — one that addresses the option of keeping deportation protections while ending associated benefits, and that honestly weighs the reliance interests of DACA recipients. Until DHS completes that process successfully, DACA's protections remain in effect. The equal protection claims were dismissed and are not revived by the remand.
What this does not decide
The Court does not decide whether DACA itself is lawful — all parties agreed DHS has the authority to rescind it. It does not permanently protect DACA recipients; the government may end the program with a better explanation. The equal protection claims were rejected only at the pleading stage, not on a developed factual record.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence in part — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor agreed that the DACA rescission violated the APA and joined the main opinion on that point. She disagreed, however, with the plurality's dismissal of the equal protection claims at the pleading stage. In her view, the combination of President Trump's campaign and post-election statements about Latino immigrants, the disproportionate impact of the rescission on that group, and the abrupt reversal of policy plausibly suggested discriminatory motivation. She would have allowed those claims to develop further on remand rather than cutting them off now.
Dissent in part — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas argued the majority's ruling has no basis in law and creates perverse incentives. In his view, DACA was unlawful from the moment it was created — it exceeded DHS's statutory authority and was never subjected to the notice-and-comment rulemaking the APA requires. When an agency rescinds an unlawful program, the illegality determination is itself a sufficient justification; no additional policy analysis or consideration of reliance interests is needed. The majority effectively forces agencies to continue administering illegal programs inherited from prior administrations unless they jump through procedural hoops the original program never cleared. He would have reversed the lower courts and dissolved the injunctions. He concurred in the result rejecting the equal protection claim.
Dissent in part — Justice Alito
Justice Alito joined Justice Thomas's opinion and wrote separately to criticize what he saw as the federal judiciary's improper intrusion into a politically charged executive decision. He noted that a single district court blocked the rescission early in the Trump administration, and the Supreme Court still had not resolved the question — an entire presidential term had effectively passed without the executive branch being able to implement its immigration policy. He agreed with Thomas that DACA was unlawful and that the rescission needed no further justification.
Dissent in part — Justice Kavanaugh
Justice Kavanaugh disagreed with the majority's decision to discard Secretary Nielsen's 2018 memorandum as impermissible post hoc rationalization. In his view, the bar on post hoc justifications is a rule directed at lawyers arguing in court, not a prohibition on agency officials providing updated or supplemental explanations. Nielsen was the Secretary of Homeland Security and had authority to elaborate on her predecessor's decision; her memo — which addressed policy reasons and reliance interests — should have been considered. Had the Court done so, the rescission would have satisfied the APA's deferential arbitrary-and-capricious standard. He concurred in rejecting the equal protection claim.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court first asked whether courts could even review the rescission. The government argued DACA was a non-enforcement policy — like a decision not to prosecute someone — which is traditionally unreviewable under the APA. But DACA was more: it created a formal application process, granted work permits, and made recipients eligible for Social Security and Medicare. Because it conferred positive benefits rather than passively declining to act, courts could review the cancellation.
- Next, the Court determined which explanation to evaluate. Two DHS memos existed: Acting Secretary Duke's 2017 rescission memo and Secretary Nielsen's 2018 follow-up memo (issued nine months later after a court ordered a better explanation). A core administrative-law principle — the contemporaneous explanation rule — limits courts to the reasons an agency gave when it acted. Because Nielsen chose not to issue a fresh rescission but only to elaborate on Duke's earlier decision, her new rationales were off-limits as impermissible after-the-fact justification.
- Reviewing Duke's memo alone, the Court found a critical gap. The Attorney General had concluded DACA was illegal because it extended benefits to a class of undocumented people without statutory authority — the same flaw the Fifth Circuit had found in a related program called DAPA. But that illegality finding addressed only benefits like work permits and Social Security eligibility. It left the forbearance decision — simply declining to deport people — legally untouched. Duke had the discretion to strip benefits while keeping forbearance, but her memo never addressed that option at all.
- That omission violated the principle from Motor Vehicle Manufacturers v. State Farm (1983): when an agency rescinds a policy, it must consider alternatives that fall within the scope of the existing policy. Forbearance wasn't a minor add-on — it was the core of DACA (the name stands for 'Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals'). Failing to consider retaining it, even without the associated benefits, made the rescission arbitrary and capricious.
- Duke's memo also entirely ignored reliance interests — the hardship to people who had enrolled in school, started careers, bought homes, and had children based on DACA's protections. The Court said DHS didn't have to accommodate those interests, but it was required to at least identify and weigh them against other policy concerns. Skipping that assessment entirely was an independent reason the rescission failed.
- On the equal protection claim, a four-justice plurality concluded the plaintiffs had not plausibly alleged the rescission was driven by racial animus against Latinos. The disproportionate impact on Latino recipients, the sequence of events before the rescission, and President Trump's prior statements about Mexican immigrants — even taken together — did not plausibly suggest the decision was motivated by unconstitutional discrimination.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Heckler v. Chaney (470 U.S. 821)
DACA created affirmative benefits, not merely a passive non-enforcement policy, so Chaney's unreviewability rule does not apply.
Reaffirms Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association of the United States, Inc. v. State Farm (463 U.S. 29)
Agency must consider policy alternatives within the scope of an existing rule before rescinding it in full.