The decision is reported by Breitbart and WaPo, with Brietbart linking to the slip opinion, online. Readers can follow the links. Briefly, a resident non-citizen erred in applying for a Georgia driver's license by checking a box asserting the applicant was a citizen. The person whose deportation was sought over that testified the wrong box was marked as unintentional error. Georgia prosecuting authorities declined to seek a trial where intentional falsifying an application is a crime. There hence was no State judicial determination of the factual question either way. But a factual decision was made by a State official, presumably of insufficient evidence to convict, and a degree of deference could be inferred as proper in federal-state balancing. An immigration administrative judge disbelieved the only evidence either way, the declarant's claim of unintended error. A review board rubber-stamped it, the 11th Circuit said it lacked judicial review jurisdiction; and a 5-4 Supremes majority agreed, Gorsuch writing the dissent.
Of interest, Gorsuch in his final paragraph wrote - correctly, it seems:
The majority concludes that courts are powerless to cor -While legal scholars may opine at length, I propose a simple hypothetical. In error the agency denies the citizenship of one who is a citizen and says send the bastard to Somalia. No judicial redress, per the opinion of the learned Ms. Coney Barrett, writing for her cohorts in the majority.
rect an agency decision holding an individual ineligible for
relief from removal based on a factual error, no matter how
egregious the error might be. The majority’s interpretation
has the further consequence of denying any chance to cor-
rect agency errors in proce ssing green-card applications
outside the removal context. Even the government cannot
bring itself to endorse the majority’s arresting conclusions.
For good reason. Those conclusions are at war with all the
evidence before us. They re ad language out of the statute
and collapse the law’s clear two-step framework. They dis-
regard the lessons of neighboring provisions and even ig-
nore the statute’s very title. They make no sense of the
statute’s history. Altogether, the majority’s novel expan-
sion of a narrow statutory exception winds up swallowing
the law’s general rule guaranteeing individuals the chance
to seek judicial review to correct obvious bureaucratic mis-
steps. It is a conclusion that turns an agency once account-
able to the rule of law into an authority unto itself. Perhaps
some would welcome a world like that. But it is hardly the
world Congress ordained
Making the hypothetical more detailed, let us say there is a State's certified birth certificate in the record, and the individual has reached a position on a learned court of the U.S. of A, where a legal argument exists of waiver, i.e., while appointment of her (him, them) and Senate ratification happened without the agency saying boo.
Then a rogue agency, akin to an office holder voted out of office but wanting to hang on, going rogue the agency says this judicial-seated person is not a citizen. Hence ship her (him, them) out.
Then there is no judicial review jurisdiction, the deportation order being the last official action, to be implemented expeditiously.
Let's even add to the hypothetical - the actual citizen wrongly declared non-citizen sits on a Court where she (he, they) are not compelled to recuse due to lack of a conflict of interest restraint at that court level; what then?
As Gorsuch wrote, "The majority concludes that courts are powerless to correct an agency decision holding an individual ineligible for relief from removal based on a factual error, no matter how egregious the error might be."
So, forthwith deport her (him, them) to, say not Somalia, but Vatican City?
Well, judicial stare decisis does have leeway, but wouldn't there be actual charm to her (him, them) off her (his, their) Court seat and packed off to the jurisdiction of the Pope and Papal law?
There admittedly are some stretching aspects to that hypothetical, yet it is dandy to me. As a hypothetical.