Noah Feldman, Columnist

Biden Didn’t Deserve to Lose That Immigration Case

An overzealous attorney general in Texas is clearly out to make a name for himself.

January 27, 2021 at 5:30 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

A nation of immigrants.
Photographer: John Moore/Getty Images

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It didn’t take long for the Texas attorney general to sue President Joe Biden’s administration over its immigration policy – nor for a federal judge to issue a nationwide injunction freezing Biden’s 100-day pause on certain deportations. If this movie sounds familiar, it should. Starting at the beginning of President Donald Trump’s administration, federal courts repeatedly struck down Trump’s executive orders, including a large number related to immigration, often using the tool of nationwide injunctions.

The big question that emerges from the Texas ruling is this: Will the new, more skeptical legal standards that courts developed over the last four years to combat Trump’s lawlessness now be used by the courts to constrain Biden?