Immigration Case Deserves Another Day in the Supreme Court

The Obama administration has asked the Supreme Court to wait until it has nine justices and rehear U.S. v. Texas, the case in which a 4-4 court affirmed a lower court’s decision to block the president’s executive action on immigration. The effort is unlikely to succeed, because the court’s rules require a majority to grant rehearing, and right now the court doesn’t have one. But in a more logical world, the court would agree now to reconsider this extremely important case, which would grant temporary legal status to some 4 million people who entered the U.S. illegally, when it is at full strength. That it probably won’t shows just how dysfunctional an eight-justice court really is.
QuickTake U.S. Supreme Court

Start with reality: the Supreme Court almost never agrees to rehear cases after it has decided them. The main reason is the court’s rehearing rule, which says among other things that “a petition for rehearing … will not be granted except by a majority of the Court, at the instance of a Justice who concurred in the judgment or decision.”