WASHINGTON _ The Supreme Court announced Monday that it won't immediately step into the legal fight over the Trump administration's cancellation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The move means the administration won't be able to move forward with ending the DACA program until the end of months of appeals _ well past the March 5 deadline the government had set to for nearly 700,000 "Dreamers" who arrived in the country illegally as children.
If the justices had stepped in, the Supreme Court could have decided the case by the end of June. Instead, rulings from two federal districts courts will prevent the government from winding down the program until the legal challenge is resolved.
"It is assumed that the Court of Appeals will proceed expeditiously to decide this case," a two-sentence order states.
The government had appealed one of those rulings to the Supreme Court and, in a rare step to leapfrog the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, asked the justices to overturn the lower court order quickly. But the Justice Department did not ask the court to immediately halt the order.
