Supreme Court will meet behind closed doors Friday on DACA

Originally published by CNN

The Supreme Court will meet behind closed doors Friday to decide whether to take up a lower court opinion that temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's effort to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program.

The Justice Department is taking the rare step of asking the Supreme Court to review the opinion -- issued by a San Francisco-based judge -- even before a federal appeals court has had a chance to weigh in.
Under normal circumstances, the Supreme Court disfavors parties from bypassing lower court proceedings and asking for direct review.
What's next for DACA? 'Don't know'
"The court hasn't granted cert before judgment since 2004, and it hasn't done so without a circuit-level ruling on the question presented since 1988, " said professor Stephen Vladeck of the University of Texas School of Law, a CNN contributor.
At issue is a ruling by federal District Judge William Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, who blocked the plan to end DACA and held that the Trump administration must resume accepting DACA renewal applications.
The issue before the court was not the legality of the program, but how the Department of Justice went about terminating it. Challengers argue that the rescission was "arbitrary and capricious" in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

After Alsup's ruling, Trump made clear his disdain for the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appeals court that has jurisdiction over Alsup's court. The President tweeted, "It just shows everyone how broken and unfair our Court System is when the opposing side in a case (such as DACA) always runs to the 9th Circuit and almost always wins before being reversed by higher courts."