OnPolitics: The Supreme Court flexed this week

Friday, June 19

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) students celebrate in front of the U.S. Supreme Court after the Supreme Court rejects President Donald Trump's bid to end legal protections for young immigrants, Thursday, June 18, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

The conservative majority handed two huge wins to both LGBTQ workers and DACA recipients.

The Supreme Court really leaned into that whole co-equal branch of the government concept this week.

In two separate cases, the conservative court dealt a setback to the Trump administration, first in a case related to LGBTQ workers' civil rights and on Thursday in striking down the administration's planned reversal of DACA.

USA TODAY's ace Supreme Court reporter Richard Wolf described Monday's ruling as such: The court's ruling is likely to have a sweeping impact on federal civil rights laws barring sex discrimination in education, health care, housing and financial credit. Lawsuits pertaining to those laws are pending in lower courts, which are required to follow Supreme Court precedent.

The majority opinion was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who along with fellow conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, joined his liberal counterparts in the 6-3 ruling. Trump's response? "We live with their decision."

But Thursday's ruling related to DACA brought forth a much-less demure Twitter storm.

"Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn't like me?" Trump tweeted.

Again, our reporter Richard Wolf breaks it down for us: The question before the justices was not whether the Trump administration can wind down the program, which is undisputed. Rather, they were asked to decide if the administration's initial reason for doing so - that DACA was illegal from the start - was accurate and sufficient, and whether officials followed the Administrative Procedure Act in seeking to rescind the program.

Roberts, again siding with the liberal justices and who wrote the majority opinion, called the Department of Homeland Security's action "arbitrary and capricious" and therefore unlawful, welcome news to more than 650,000 young, undocumented immigrants who can continue living and working in the U.S. with the protection DACA provides.

"I started trembling: my hands, my feet, my whole body. I thought, 'Oh my gosh, this actually happened,'" Gaby Pacheco told USA TODAY's Alan Gomez. Pacheco was among the first "Dreamers" who publicly advocated for legal protections for DACA recipients. "I feel like that little monkey that's been on my back all these years, I can say, 'Get off of me.'"

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