When it takes up the question of whether President Obama's 2014 immigration executive actions were constitutional, the Supreme Court will throw out its typical playbook. 
 
 United States v. Texas is one of the most — if not the most — important cases before the highest court this term. It's certainly the most important immigration case the Supreme Court has taken up in a generation (or, arguably, a century). And the Court is treating it accordingly. 
 
 On Monday, instead of splitting up 60 minutes of oral arguments between the two sides of the case, as usually happens, the Court will convene for 90 minutes — and bring in more parties to argue their case. 
 
 Texas and the 25 other states suing will get 30 minutes. The federal government will get 35. But the Supreme Court has also given 10 minutes to a lawyer representing a group of immigrant women who'd benefit from Obama's executive actions. And that's not all — 15 minutes will go to the US House of Representatives (thanks to the Republican House majority), which has jumped in to support the states. 
 
 The unusually complicated oral argument process reflects just how messy this case is. It's a case covering surprisingly narrow-sounding legal questions, but its outcome carries broad implications for the relationship between Congress and the president, and the relationship between the federal government and the states. Oh, yeah — and it's a presidential election year, and both immigration and the Court itself have become election issues. 
 
 All this makes it something of a nightmare scenario for Chief Justice John Roberts, who tends to be more anxious than the typical Supreme Court justice to present the Court's opinions as drawn purely from law rather than politics. 
 
 As the justices hear oral arguments and consider the case before issuing an opinion (which they're expected to do in late June, at the end of the term), Roberts and the other justices will have to work through legal questions that are both less contentious and more abstract than the broader immigration debate makes them seem. 
 
 Then they'll have to figure out if there's any way they can cobble together a five-vote majority for a lasting opinion — or if the eight-person Court will deadlock, putting the most important case of the Court's term in limbo and creating the opportunity for chaos. 
 
 1) What's this case about? 
 
 In November 2014, President Obama issued a series of memos declaring executive actions on immigration. Two of those are at issue in this case. 
 
 One memo expanded the existing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which since 2012 had allowed immigrants who'd come to the US as children to apply for temporary protection from deportation and work permits. 
 
 The other one added a new deferred action program — the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program — which would have allowed millions of unauthorized immigrants who have US citizen or permanent resident children to apply for deportation protection and work permits as well. 
 
 The two 2014 actions are usually referred to as DAPA/DACA+. Since the states won in the lower courts, both of them have been put on hold since the first ruling was issued in February 2015. The original DACA program from 2012, however, is still in place and isn't being challenged in this suit. (To prevent confusion, I'll just refer to DAPA instead of DAPA/DACA+ when talking about the 2014 actions.) 
 
 2) Why did President Obama create this program in the first place? 
 
 Federal immigration enforcement has totally transformed over the past 20 years. More people are eligible for deportation than ever before. The growth of the unauthorized population pre–Great Recession meant there were more people to deport. After 9/11, the government got vastly more money and resources for deportation. And deportations escalated accordingly — from 183,000 in 1999 to a high of 400,000 during the first several years of the Obama administration. 
 
 President Obama has spent most of his time in office trying to impose some sort of control on all of this — to make sure the government is choosing who's most important to deport, rather than arbitrarily deporting anyone Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents get their hands on. His first attempts — setting high and low "priorities" for deportation and telling immigration agents to follow them — were something both sides in the current court case agree he could do but that rank-and-file immigration agents frequently ignored in favor of their own judgment. 
 
 So in 2012, President Obama created the first deferred action program, DACA — allowing people to proactively apply for protection from deportation, rather than simply hoping that ICE followed the memo not to deport them. It's been solidly effective. After comprehensive immigration reform stalled in Congress in 2013, pressure grew on Obama to use the tool that had worked — deferred action — to protect other groups of low-priority immigrants, and he did just that with DAPA and expanded DACA in 2014. 
 
 DAPA was supposed to be the program that ensured Obama's legacy on immigration, turning him from the "deporter in chief" of his first term to a man who brought immigrants out of the shadows. If the Supreme Court lets the program go forward, that legacy is assured. If it strikes DAPA down, Obama's legacy — and immigrants' attitude toward the Democratic Party — will be an ambivalent and disappointing one. 
 
 3) How did United States v. Texas get to the Supreme Court? 
 
 United States v. Texas is political in its origins. That doesn't at all mean that the states that sued the Obama administration are wrong on the merits — it's just an acknowledgment of the circumstances around the case's genesis shortly after Obama announced the executive actions. 
 
 There wasn't a serious legal challenge to the original DACA program in 2012, even though many of the criticisms of DAPA in this case would have applied to DACA as well. But in June 2012 the country was in the middle of a general election campaign, and the Republican nominee was trying to run toward the center and appeal to Latinos. In November 2014, on the other hand, the relatively unpopular President Obama was responding to an electoral defeat in the midterm elections — including the loss of the Senate — with executive actions on an issue that mobilized the GOP base. 
 
 The states on each side of the case have lined up along partisan lines. The Texas suit involves 23 states — all but three of them under unified Republican control — as well as four Republican governors (three of whom have Democratic attorneys general who wouldn't let the state officially join the case) and one Republican attorney general. The states that have filed briefs supporting the Obama administration, meanwhile, represent about two-thirds of the states with Democratic attorneys general. 
 
 Texas is leading the coalition of states bringing the lawsuit for two reasons. One, it's offered the most persuasive case for how DAPA could actually hurt the state (more on that later). Two, it houses the Southern District of Texas, which was the court the states chose to file their case in, presumably because they knew they'd have a good chance there. (The administration and its allies have implied that this is unfair, but it happens all the time.) 
 
 They chose wisely. In February 2015 — just a few days before the government was scheduled to start accepting applications for expanded DACA — Judge Andrew Hanen issued an injunction, preventing the government from moving ahead with the program on the logic that the states were "likely" to prevail on some of their claims. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the injunction. And in January, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. 
 
 As the case has made its way through the courts, it's gotten much broader. Initially, the injunction was based on a narrow claim that the Obama administration hadn't used the right procedure in instituting DAPA. The Fifth Circuit ruled that DAPA was also (or at least, was likely to be) illegal on the merits. And now the Supreme Court has added a constitutional question: whether DAPA violates the "take care" clause of the Constitution. 
 
 While this is theoretically still a ruling on the injunction, the Supreme Court is dealing with the merits of the case — ensuring that if a majority of the Court's eight justices side with the Obama administration, or with the states, the case is finished (and DAPA is alive, or dead) for the duration of Obama's time in office. 
 
 The stakes have risen accordingly. The House of Representatives asked, and was granted, the chance to argue that DAPA violates laws that Congress has passed — something that isn't totally unheard of at the Supreme Court level but certainly raises the political temperature of the case. 
 
 And on the federal government's side, the argument on behalf of the "Jane Doe" immigrant women — not to mention the likely presence of many potential DAPA beneficiaries in the Supreme Court during the oral arguments — will inevitably remind the justices that this is a question of the balance and separation of powers, and about immigrants themselves. 
 
 4) What is the Supreme Court actually ruling on in this case? 
 
 Because immigration is such a divisive culture war issue — and because phrases like "enforce the law" get tossed around frequently as talking points — it sure seems like this case should be a massive legal dispute over what should happen to unauthorized immigrants in the US. But it's not. There are four questions at play in the case, and all of them are, given the importance of the case, relatively narrow. 
 
 1) Is it even legal for Texas to sue the federal government to stop the DAPA program? 
 
 The states' case, in one sentence: It costs the state government money to give subsidized driver's licenses to DAPA recipients who now qualify for them. 
 
 The federal government's case, in one sentence: If that were all it took for a state to sue the federal government over a policy it didn't like, the courts would be clogged forever. 
 
 The first question the Court has to address whether Texas and the other states had "standing" — whether they are legally able to bring the lawsuit at all. In order to show standing, Texas has to show that implementing DAPA causes some direct harm to the state. 
 
 Even if the substance of Texas's legal argument against DAPA is correct, if it can't show that it had standing the whole suit gets dismissed — allowing DAPA to go into effect after all. (This route would give the Supreme Court some appealing options, as we'll get to in a bit.) 
 
 The Republican governors and state attorneys general on Texas's side of the case clearly think that allowing unauthorized immigrants to remain in their states is harmful for all sorts of reasons. But as is often the case with Supreme Court cases — and is definitely the case with this one — the actual argument being put forward in the courtroom is a lot narrower than the argument over whether unauthorized immigrants are good or bad for America that's happening around the case. 
 
 So far, courts have found that the states have standing for a single reason: Texas driver's license costs. Under Texas law, people who get deferred action are eligible for driver's licenses — and because fees only partially cover the cost of producing a license, the state government covers the rest of the cost. DAPA would make hundreds of thousands of Texans eligible to apply for driver's licenses for the first time, which would cost the state money. 
 
 The Supreme Court now has to decide whether that's enough of a reason to allow Texas (and the other states) to sue the federal government over the entire policy. 
 
 The federal government argues it's not President Obama's fault that Texas law would allow DAPA recipients to get driver's licenses. Furthermore, supporters of the federal government's side in this case argue there's a slippery slope: Allow the states to sue the government over a policy they don't like, as long as they can show that it costs the state something (even if that cost is recouped), and the courts will be clogged with lawsuits left and right. 
 
 They're hoping that possibility will scare Chief Justice Roberts (who dissented in a previous case about states suing the federal government, Massachusetts v. EPA) into protecting the Supreme Court's legacy by remaining above the dispute. 
 
 2) Is DAPA a substantive new regulation — which the Obama administration didn't follow the proper procedure for? 
 
 The federal government's argument, in one sentence: Nope, it's just a general "statement of policy," and we do those all the time. 
 
 The states' argument, in one sentence: It sets pretty hard-and-fast standards for who qualifies for deferred action and work authorization; that seems pretty rule-like. 
 
 This question also seems pretty narrow — it's a challenge about whether the Obama administration did DAPA the right way, instead of whether it was the right thing to do. So it might not get a lot of the Supreme Court's attention. But this was actually the basis for the original ruling freezing DAPA, issued in February 2015 by Judge Hanen of the Fifth Circuit. 
 
 Under the Administrative Procedures Act, the government can't just issue new regulatory "rules"; it has to propose them and then allow a certain period for public response. (Hence the term "notice and comment," which comes up a bunch when people are discussing this aspect of the Supreme Court case.) 
 
 The Obama administration didn't do this with DAPA. It argues it didn't have to, because it wasn't a real rule, just a general guideline. The states disagree. 
 
 At root, this is a disagreement about how the deferred action programs actually work: whether immigration agents actually have the leeway to reject applications for any reason (policy-like) or whether the Obama administration has dictated that anyone who meets the standards should get protection (rule-like). 
 
 And because DAPA hasn't gone into effect yet, this is really an argument about how the original DACA program is working — even though the existing deferred action program isn't being challenged in this case. 
 
 3) Is DAPA within the president's authority, or does it encroach on parts of immigration law where Congress has already set down the rules? 
 
 The federal government's argument, in one sentence: DAPA is just a way to tell immigrants they're not being deported — something that both sides agree is legal. 
 
 The states' argument, in one sentence: DAPA goes beyond that, by bestowing "lawful presence" and work permits on immigrants Congress didn't want to grant either one to. 
 
 Legally, this is the biggest question about DAPA: Does it violate US law by going beyond what the president is allowed to do on immigration? But again, the disagreement between the two sides in the actual court case is a lot narrower than you'd think (given the general heatedness of the immigration debate). 
 
 US immigration law gives the president a lot of latitude to make policy decisions — more than he gets in a lot of other areas. So the states in this case agree that President Obama (and the rest of the executive branch) have the latitude to choose whom to deport and whom not to deport. The states even say it would be okay if the Obama administration issued cards to people who were "low priorities" for deportation indicating that they were low priorities. 
 
 But they say DAPA goes beyond what the president is allowed to do, and crosses into areas where Congress has set firm rules on immigration, in two ways. It allows deferred action recipients to apply for work permits, which the states argue violates Congress's intent not to allow unauthorized immigrants to work legally in the US. And, they say, DAPA deems people to be "lawfully present" in the US even though Congress has said it's illegal for them to be here. 
 
 The phrase "lawful presence" is probably going to be thrown around a lot at Monday's oral arguments — it's become increasingly central to the states' argument. The federal government argues that the states are simply getting confused. "Lawful presence" isn't the same thing as "lawful status" in immigration law — it doesn't grant anyone the right to be in the US. (The federal government has started arguing that it's really more like "tolerated presence.") 
 
 3) Is Obama abandoning his constitutional obligation to "take care" to enforce Congress's laws by implementing DAPA? 
 
 The federal government's argument, in one sentence: Nope. 
 
 The states' argument, in one sentence: Yep. 
 
 This question wasn't even considered in the lower courts — the Supreme Court added it to the case on its own. It centers on the Constitution's "take care" clause: "He shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." 
 
 There isn't a lot of Supreme Court jurisprudence on what this phrase actually charges the president to do, so it's interesting that the Court felt it was particularly appropriate here — though it's entirely possible that the justice interested in this was Antonin Scalia and the surviving justices don't have any interest. 
 
 The answer to the "take care" question depends on whether DAPA violates US law to begin with. If the federal government is right, and DAPA is within the president's legal authority, then he's not abandoning his duty to execute the laws by implementing it. If the states are right, and DAPA is illegal, then Obama might be violating the "take care" clause in implementing it — but the program would be struck down in any event. 
 
 For people who believe that President Obama is legally obligated to deport unauthorized immigrants under all circumstances, the idea that he's violating the constitution by not "taking care" to enforce immigration laws has some appeal. But again, neither side is actually arguing that in court. 
 
 5) How is the Supreme Court likely to rule? And how does Justice Scalia's death affect this? 
 
 There are dozens of hypothetical possible answers the Court could reach to any of the four questions above. But in terms of the case's practical outcome, there are essentially four options. 
 
 If "swing vote" Justice Anthony Kennedy (or Chief Justice Roberts) joins the liberal wing of the Court, the Obama administration will get an outright five-vote majority. The lower court rulings will be overturned, and DAPA and DACA+ will start accepting applications. 
 
 If the conservative wing of the Court gets a five-vote majority, with a liberal justice joining the conservative wing, the lower court ruling siding with the states will be upheld for good, and DAPA and DACA+ will be permanently dead. (This is unlikely, but it's certainly not impossible.) 
 
 If Kennedy joins the conservative side, but the Court's four liberal justices stick together, nobody will get a majority. Justice Scalia's absence will create a 4-4 tie. That would leave the existing injunction in place — forcing the Obama administration to keep DAPA on ice — but it would force the lower courts to go back and issue final rulings on the case, which they still haven't done. 
 
 Furthermore — and this is where things get really messy — the absence of a Supreme Court opinion could allow another circuit court to hear a case on DAPA and rule that it could go forward. How such a lawsuit would proceed is unclear; maybe some of the states that sided with the Obama administration could find standing. But it would create a situation in which DAPA was legal in some parts of the country and illegal in others. 
 
 It's entirely possible that the Supreme Court would go out of its way to avoid that level of chaos. That's why some analysts think the most likely outcome is this: 
 
 Chief Justice Roberts joins with the Court's liberals to throw out the case based on standing — siding with the federal government on the first question and ruling that Texas didn't have the right to bring the suit at all. 
 
 6) What does the case mean for people in the real world? 
 
 If the Court sides with the states, nothing changes — programs that currently aren't in effect won't go into effect. But if the Court sides with the administration, an estimated 4.5 million immigrants who are currently vulnerable to deportation will get three years of protection and the ability to work in the US legally. 
 
 The effects this could have on the lives of those immigrants (and their families) could be huge. 
 
 The evidence from DACA, which has protected about 700,000 immigrants for the past three and a half years, is promising. Three-quarters of DACA recipients had been able to get better-paying jobs, 30 percent had gone back to school, and 59 percent said they could help support their families. There's evidence that DACA helps keep immigrants integrated into American life — instead of losing interest in school or career because they feel their immigration status holds them back. 
 
 If the Supreme Court reinstates DAPA at the end of June, the Obama administration will only have seven months left in office to process applications — and many of the community groups that would have been able to help people get those applications will be busy mobilizing for the election. 
 
 Furthermore, the election might discourage some immigrants from wanting to sign up to begin with — if they're worried that Donald Trump will be president come 2017, they'll be much less inclined to turn over their personal information to the government. 
 
 7) What happens when a new president gets elected in November? 
 
 DAPA is an Obama administration initiative. There's nothing stopping the next president from ending the program and rescinding its protections, even if the Supreme Court upholds it this year. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump have already promised to do just that in their first few days in office. 
 
 That doesn't mean that the immigrants who have gotten deferred action so far would necessarily get deported. In fact, that's the bigger decision that President Cruz or Trump would have to make: what to do with a database of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are unauthorized but who by definition are well-educated, speak English, or at least have kids who are US citizens. 
 
 A President Trump might start his mass deportation campaign by targeting the immigrants he can most easily locate: former deferred action recipients. 
 
 Some pundits have argued that this means the real immigration fight is what happens in November, rather than what happens in the courts this spring. Insofar as the next president will choose whether to end deferred action, that's true. But the Supreme Court decision could definitely shape what options a president has to expand it, as both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have promised to do. 
 
 Sanders has explicitly said that he'd protect some 8 or 9 million people using deferred action; Clinton has said she wouldn't deport immigrants who hadn't committed crimes, but hasn't explained how she'd protect them. 
 
 If the Supreme Court strikes down DAPA — or upholds it, but articulates a limiting principle that clarifies that this is the most a president can do — both of those plans will be a lot harder to implement, but a Democratic president would be under even more pressure to find a way to protect immigrants. That could create trouble. 
 
 8) What kind of precedent is set if the Court sides with the Obama administration? 
 
 Conservatives siding with the states in United States v. Texas argue that if Obama wins this case, there's no limit to who could be protected from deportation. They make a persuasive case. 
 
 The Obama administration argues that while DAPA was legal, it wouldn't have been legal to give deferred action to even more immigrants — say, parents of DACA recipients. But their reasoning on this point is fairly weak (and it doesn't help that both candidates for their own party's presidential nomination are promising to do just that). 
 
 This lack of "limiting principle" gives conservatives a lot of pause. A president could do whatever he likes on a whole host of issues — say, refuse to enforce any environmental regulations, or even declare a tax cut by executive fiat. (Vox's Andrew Prokop lays out some of the options.) 
 
 Hypotheticals like these raise some valid concerns about the use of prosecutorial discretion generally. But these are issues with existing law, and it's not clear that a ruling for the feds in this case would make them any worse. 
 
 Many legal scholars believe that immigration law simply gives the president more discretion than other areas of law. So a ruling for Obama in this case wouldn't necessarily create a precedent for other issues. 
 
 9) What kind of precedent does it set if the Court sides with the states? 
 
 If the president has historically had a lot of leeway to set immigration policy, though, a ruling for the states would effectively constrain that power. 
 
 The states in this case aren't asking the Supreme Court to issue a broad ruling. But that doesn't stop the Court from doing so if it wants. And if the Court finds that it's illegal for the president to allow a large group of immigrants to apply for work permits, that definitely calls the original DACA program into question — and raises questions for other uses of executive power on immigrations as well. (An extremely broad ruling against the president could even dictate that the executive branch can't declare immigrants "low priorities" for deportation, though that's extremely unlikely.) 
 
 But even a relatively narrow ruling for the states would have implications for other issues where the president didn't have as much leeway to begin with. 
 
 It's possible to imagine a Supreme Court ruling against Obama whose argument implicitly called into question other things he's done, from delaying the employer mandate to modifying key provisions of No Child Left Behind (not to mention the original DACA program). It wouldn't automatically strike down any of these, but it could open the door to future court challenges. 
 
 What legal scholars who side with the administration are particularly concerned about, though, is what will happen if Texas and the other states are granted standing at all — even if the Court ultimately sides with Obama. They argue that this would essentially invite states to sue the federal government over any policy they don't like, and then hunt down some way the policy harms them. (In an amicus brief, for example, law professor Walter Dellinger argues that states could start suing the IRS over which organizations are exempt from federal taxes.) 
 
 To a certain extent, this is what the states are doing anyway — no state has ever sued the federal government for doing something the state likes. But the Supreme Court has long tried to avoid becoming a way for states to challenge federal policy willy-nilly. That's the sort of politics it tends to want to stay out of. 
 
 Then again, the lesson of United States v. Texas may very well be that even if politics stop at the Supreme Court door, the cases that come in — and what happens to decisions that come out — are political from start to finish. ||||| The Supreme Court appeared divided during oral arguments Monday in a crucial case challenging the executive actions on immigration President Obama took in 2014. 
 
 Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is typically the court's swing voter, seemed to side with Texas and the 25 other states arguing the president overstepped his executive authority in granting deferred deportation to nearly 5 million immigrants. 
 
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 Kennedy said the justices were being asked to define the limits of discretion, adding that Obama’s actions seemed more like a legislative act than an executive one. 
 
 "It's as if the president is setting the policy and the Congress is executing it," he said. "That’s just upside down." 
 
 A 4-4 split by the court, which has shown signs of struggling to decide cases with just eight justices, would leave in place a lower court decision blocking Obama’s actions. The split outcome would virtually guarantee that Obama's programs wouldn't start until after he leaves office, if at all. 
 
 The justices spent the majority of the 90-minute arguments Monday grappling with whether Texas has a legal basis to challenge the creation of the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) initiative and the expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Both programs have been on hold since February 2015. 
 
 The states claim they would be burdened by having to spend more on public services like healthcare, law enforcement and education if undocumented parents of both American citizens and legal permanent residents are allowed to stay in the country. 
 
 Texas, specifically, said it would be hurt by having to issue more drivers licenses, a benefit that’s now subsidized. 
 
 “Isn’t losing money the classic case for standing?” Chief Justice John Roberts asked. 
 
 Since the administration argued that DAPA does not injure states because it does not require them to do anything, Roberts wanted to know whether it would be illegal for Texas to deny DAPA recipients drivers licenses. 
 
 “If they did not offer licenses to those who are lawfully present because of your policy, avoided that injury, you would sue them, wouldn’t you?” he asked Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr., who argued on behalf of the administration. 
 
 Verrilli said he wasn’t sure if the government would sue since Texas has not changed its law. 
 
 “No, because they have what seems to me a perfectly legitimate policy,” Roberts quipped. 
 
 Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan questioned why the states aren’t challenging federal regulations that have long granted recipients of deferred action the ability to work and receive public benefits. 
 
 “It seems to me that what you should be attacking is not DAPA,” Kagan said. “What you should be attacking is the work authorization regulations DHS [Department of Homeland Security], or before that, the INA [Immigrant and Nationality Act] has had for 30 years,” Kagan told Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller. 
 
 But Keller said the states chose to challenge DAPA itself instead of the government regulations. 
 
 “That is what is transforming unlawful conduct into authorized lawful conduct,” he said. 
 
 Sotomayor jumped on Keller's comments that DAPA is “one of the largest changes in immigration policy in our nation’s history.” 
 
 “How can you say that?” she asked. “We have the Fairness Act that happened in 1990. It granted basically the same thing, deferred action and work authorization, to 1.5 million people out of 4 million. Forty percent of the immigrant population of the time was affected. Here, the best estimate is that only 35 percent are affected.” 
 
 When Keller corrected Sotomayor and said that only 47,000 people actually got relief, she pointed to congressional action. 
 
 “Here, we have a Congress that's decided — some members of the Congress have decided — they don't like it, and so Congress has remained silent,” Sotomayor said. “It doesn't mean that at some later point after the election or whenever, Congress can't step in and do what it wants to do.” 
 
 The House of Representatives had 15 minutes Monday to argue that the president’s programs should be struck down. 
 
 Erin Murphy, the attorney representing the House, argued the president does not have the power to give immigrants the ability to work in the U.S. If all the administration wanted to do was protect people from being deported, she said, it would have simply issued an enforcement priority memo. 
 
 “What the executive wanted to accomplish was something more,” she said. “To say not only are you not an enforcement priority, but we want you to be eligible to work and to receive benefits. And the way that we do that is by taking this affirmative act of converting you into a status that, under our own regulation, changes your eligibility.” 
 
 The Supreme Court issued the order giving lawmakers a chance to be heard after the House filed an amicus brief in support of the states. Democrats who disagreed with the Republican-led brief filed a brief of their own in support of the administration but did not get time in court to argue their position. 
 
 The case could have a devastating effect on the president’s legacy. Obama vowed when he campaigned in both 2008 and 2012 to push for comprehensive immigration reform but has yet to fulfill those promises. 
 
 A 4-4 tie could kill the immigration programs for good. The lower court's temporary injunction would stand while the states seek to permanently block the president's actions. The litigation could then span into the next administration, which may or may not fight to uphold Obama's actions, depending on who the next president is. 
 
 White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Monday declined to guess how the justices will decide. 
 
 “At this point, I am going to withhold any prognostication on behalf of the administration and reiterate our confidence in the power of the legal arguments” made by administration lawyers, he told reporters. 
 
 The high court asked both parties to argue an additional question in their briefs — whether the immigration programs violated the Take Care Clause under Article II of the Constitution, which directs the president to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. That move signaled the justices are determined to settle the case, though the question was never raised during oral arguments. 
 
 — Jordan Fabian contributed to this report, which was updated at 3:01 p.m. ||||| Supporters of fair immigration reform gather in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, April 18, 2016. The Supreme Court is taking up an important dispute over immigration that could affect... (Associated Press) 
 
 Supporters of fair immigration reform gather in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, April 18, 2016. The Supreme Court is taking up an important dispute over immigration that could affect millions of people who are living in the country illegally. The Obama administration is asking the... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court appeared divided between its liberal and conservative justices Monday over President Barack Obama's immigration programs that could affect millions of people who are in the country illegally. 
 
 The administration's best hope for a favorable ruling after 90 minutes of arguments at the high court appeared to rest with Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts asked questions suggesting he could side with the administration if there were a small change in the proposed programs. 
 
 The administration is asking the justices to allow it to put in place two programs that could shield roughly 4 million people from deportation and make them eligible to work in the United States. 
 
 Texas is leading 26 states dominated by Republicans in challenging the programs that Obama announced in 2014 and that have been put on hold by lower courts. 
 
 The programs would apply to parents whose children are citizens or are living in the country legally. Eligibility also would be expanded for the president's 2012 effort that applies to people who were brought here illegally as children. More than 700,000 people have taken advantage of that earlier program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The new program for parents, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, and the expanded program for children could reach as many as 4 million people, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. 
 
 The fate of the programs could hang on a two-word phrase the administration used to describe the status of immigrants under the programs— lawful presence. Texas and congressional Republicans who back the state say the phrase is important because it gives the immigrants more rights than federal law allows. 
 
 Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. told the justices that they could get rid of that phrase and essentially leave the programs unchanged. "If the court wants to put a red pencil through it, that's totally fine," Verrilli said. 
 
 Later in the arguments, Roberts sounded interested in that idea, asking lawyer Erin Murphy if the court could, in fact, just "cross it out." 
 
 Murphy, representing House Republicans, said it wasn't that simple. 
 
 If the court is split ideologically, the case could end in a 4-4 tie following Justice Antonin Scalia's death in February. That would leave the programs in limbo, almost certainly through the end of Obama's presidency. 
 
 Both sides acknowledge that the outcome of the presidential election could determine the programs' fates, even if the Supreme Court rules for the administration. Republican candidates have pledged to roll back Obama's actions, and Republican candidate Donald Trump has proposed deporting the roughly 11 million people who are living in the U.S. illegally. 
 
 As arguments began, hundreds of pro-immigration demonstrators filled the sidewalk in front of the court and spilled into the street, leading police to close the road to traffic. Demonstrators held signs that read "Keep Families Together" and chanted "Si se puede," which is Spanish for "Yes we can." 
 
 "We are here to tell them this is our home and we are not going anywhere," said Cristina Jimenez, director of United We Dream, a group that advocates for immigrant families. 
 
 A small group of demonstrators opposing Obama's action held signs saying the president had overstepped his authority. 
 
 The high court is expected to decide by late June whether the efforts can move forward in the waning months of Obama's presidency, amid a presidential campaign that has been marked by harsh Republican rhetoric over immigration. 
 
 Republican governors and members of Congress have argued that Obama doesn't have the power to effectively change immigration law. When he announced the measures 17 months ago, Obama said he was acting under his own authority because Congress had failed to overhaul the immigration system. The Senate had passed legislation on a bipartisan vote, but House Republicans refused to put the matter to a vote. 
 
 The administration and immigration advocates say the immigration orders are neither unprecedented nor even unusual. Rather, they say, Obama's programs build on past efforts by Democratic and Republican administrations to use discretion in deciding whom to deport. 
 
 The administration and its supporters said the challenged programs do not offer blanket protection, but depend on case-by-case reviews. The protection from deportation also would be temporary, for three years. 
 
 Another 16 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia said they would reap billions of dollars in additional taxes and would see other benefits, including increasing trust between immigrant communities and police, if the programs are allowed to take effect. ||||| In 2004, eight justices were split over whether public schools could have students recite the phrase "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Scalia had recused himself, and a tie vote would have affirmed the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that the practice was unconstitutional. Instead, the justices defused the controversy by deciding that Michael Newdow, the father who sued on his daughter's behalf, did not have standing. ||||| WASHINGTON -- For about 10 minutes next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear from several million undocumented immigrants, all of them potential beneficiaries under President Barack Obama’s stalled executive actions on immigration. 
 
 They won't all be there, of course, and the vast majority are probably unaware that someone will even be speaking for them. But three women -- all mothers with young children who are U.S. citizens -- have chosen to take a stand in court for themselves and all the others like them. 
 
 Through their attorney, the mothers will tell the justices that more than legal lines and constitutional prerogatives are at play in United States v. Texas. There are real lives at stake. 
 
 “I felt the need to speak up,” said one of them, identified in court papers as Jane Doe #2, in an interview conducted in Spanish with The Huffington Post. “Unfortunately, there are many who are in my same situation but choose not to speak up. They stay quiet for fear of retaliation or that they’d be deported.” 
 
 The three Jane Does are what the law calls “intervenors” in a watershed case that began as a longshot challenge to the president's deportation relief programs. It now stands to redefine the contours of executive power and the executive branch’s exercise of prosecutorial discretion under the Constitution. 
 
 U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas Affidavit of Jane Doe #2, filed in federal court in January 2015, requesting permission to participate in the case now called United States v. Texas. 
 
 The bulk of the hearing next Monday will focus on these and other thorny legal issues -- and arguments will be made by lawyers for the United States, for Texas and for the U.S. House of Representatives, which last month voted to side with the states against the president. 
 
 But the women will add "the perspective of the only non-institutional, human participants in the case as parties," said Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in a press briefing on Thursday. MALDEF is representing the women, with the pro bono help of the law firms O'Melveny & Myers and DLA Piper. Saenz will present their argument before the Supreme Court. 
 
 "There is an urgency to the case of the Does that is unique in this litigation," Nina Perales, vice president of litigation at MALDEF, said in an interview. "Every month that goes by without this policy in place, without this guidance in place, is a month of suffering and fear." 
 
 Evidence of that is the fact that the Jane Does won't actually be at the court, because checkpoints in the region along the U.S.-Mexico border mean they risk revealing their undocumented status to the authorities if they try to travel outside the area. “Landlocked” is how Carlos García, Jane Doe #2’s local attorney, described the women’s living situation. 
 
 Obama announced plans in November 2014 for a broad expansion of deportation relief, but those initiatives were blocked under a nationwide injunction issued in this case in February 2015. The Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program, or DAPA, would allow certain certain parents who are undocumented immigrants to remain in the U.S. and work for three years. Obama also planned to expand the existing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, to allow more undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children to stay temporarily and gain work authorization. The two efforts could aid as many as 3.7 million people, according to an estimate from the Migration Policy Institute. 
 
 Texas, joined by 25 other states, sued in December 2014 to halt the implementation of the programs -- arguing, among other claims, that the programs would harm the states' interests and that the Obama administration had overstepped its executive authority. Lower courts accepted the first claim but never addressed the latter constitutional question. That is, until the Supreme Court stepped in and decided to rule anyway on whether the president’s immigration plan runs afoul of the Constitution’s requirement that he “take care” that the laws be faithfully executed. 
 
 Every month that goes by without this policy in place, without this guidance in place, is a month of suffering and fear. Nina Perales, vice president of litigation at MALDEF 
 
 But the women had a role in the case long before it reached the justices or became an issue of election-year politics. 
 
 Soon after the litigation began in the federal courthouse in Brownsville, Texas, Perales and her team began reaching out to contacts in the state’s Rio Grande Valley region to find undocumented immigrants who might be helped by DAPA or the expansion of DACA and who would be interested in participating in MALDEF's intervention. She ended up connecting with the three Jane Does, all of whom are originally from Mexico and would be eligible for DAPA as mothers of U.S. citizen children. 
 
 In an interview, Jane Doe #2, who lives in McAllen, Texas, said that she has two U.S.-born children: a 7-year-old son who is in second grade and a 5-year-old daughter who is in preschool. Even as she helps care for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s, she is trying to earn her GED in hopes of better work opportunities and to provide for her children. 
 
 “Sentí mucha emoción,” Jane Doe #2 said in Spanish, by which she meant she was overcome with emotion when she first learned of Obama’s executive actions. If upheld, DAPA would give her the chance to obtain a better job and a driver’s license, without worrying that immigration authorities would one day seek her deportation. 
 
 “What would happen to my children? They are very small,” she said. Asked if her children knew about her status and her court involvement, she said, “My children don’t know that I’m illegal. I haven’t told them about any of this. I don’t talk to them about any of this for fear that one day an official may ask them [about me] and they’ll tell them I’m illegal.” 
 
 MALDEF did not make the other two women available for interviews, but sworn declarations filed in federal court in January 2015, a month after the lawsuit began, shed some light on who they are. Jane Doe #1 lives in Edinburg, Texas, and moved to the U.S. from Mexico 15 years ago. She is married with four children, the youngest of whom was 8 years old at the time of the filing. She is an active volunteer at her church and her children's schools, and she works selling tamales, other food and catalog items. 
 
 Jane Doe #3 moved to the U.S. from Mexico 11 years ago and lives in Donna, Texas. She has a 2-year-old daughter. To support her family, she sells food and other items at a flea market, and previously worked as a waitress and in child care. 
 
 That these mothers are living in the shadows is implicit in their court filings, which argue that they must remain anonymous lest they “face opprobrium and possibly harassment from members of the public who support” the states’ legal challenge. 
 
 Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images Another immigrant, Rosario Reyes, originally from El Salvador, and her 7-year-old son Victor attend a December press conference in support of DAPA. 
 
 The women and their attorneys had to fight to be involved in the lawsuit at all, over the wishes of the U.S. government and the states suing it. Both opposed the intervention by MALDEF when the case was before U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, whose ruling blocking DAPA and the expanded DACA set in motion the case’s tortured path toward the Supreme Court. 
 
 "Nobody, no one, wanted us in" the case, Perales said. The U.S. government's position, in particular, took MALDEF by surprise. 
 
 "We were surprised because we thought that we could add something to the litigation, that it would be better to have the presence of parents who are affected by this policy, and we thought the defense would benefit from having the participation of the Does," Perales said. The U.S. Solicitor General’s Office, which will present the government’s position at the Supreme Court on Monday, declined to comment for this story. 
 
 In a tersely worded order, Hanen denied the mothers' request to intervene in the case. 
 
 Perales said he also rejected similar requests from a motley crew of interested characters, including a goat farmer, birther advocate and attorney Orly Taitz and immigration hardliner Sheriff Joe Arpaio -- whose own challenge to the president’s immigration orders was turned away in January by the Supreme Court. Perales accused Hanen of being "incapable of differentiating" between the mothers and "a very kooky group of people." 
 
 An appeals court saw things differently. In November 2015, on the same day it dealt a blow to the Obama administration by upholding Hanen’s injunction against the deportation relief programs, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit issued a separate decision siding with the women. 
 
 “The Jane Does themselves will or will not be eligible for deferred action, depending on the outcome of this case,” the 5th Circuit said in a 16-page decision. The court stressed that “their interest in avoiding deportation is a concrete, personalized interest that is legally protected by” the Constitution. 
 
 Now that the women are officially part of the case, they’ve become allies of a sort with the federal government in its bid to lift the hold on the executive actions. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to give the mothers' legal team 10 minutes of the Obama administration’s argument time to present their case. 
 
 "The issue was simply too important to pack up our bags and go home," Perales said. 
 
 A decision in United States v. Texas is expected sometime before the end of June. ||||| There is no place in the country that will be more affected by the Supreme Court battle over President Obama’s plan to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation than sprawling Los Angeles County. 
 
 There are an estimated 1 million undocumented people here, about 400,000 of whom could be eligible for the protected status that Obama says would bring them “out of the shadows.” 
 
 County officials plan an aggressive program to sign them up should the justices give the green light. Arguments in the case are scheduled for Monday. 
 
 [Supreme Court to review Obama’s immigration policy change] 
 
 “I’m looking at the return the county gets,” said Hilda L. Solis, Obama’s former labor secretary who is now chair of the powerful Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. “Do I want them to pay taxes? Absolutely. Do I want them to be established, with some form of identification? Yes. I think we’re all better off, we’re safer.” 
 
 Leo Murrieta and his family were homeless after immigrating to the United States from Mexico, but his parents found jobs working in the Las Vegas casinos. He sees immigration reform as a top issue for this election, but also is optimistic that progress can be made. (Alice Li,Jayne Orenstein/The Washington Post) 
 
 It is a familiar view from a Democratic politician in the state with the country’s largest concentration of immigrants. 
 
 But the state with the second-largest concentration — Texas — is leading the fight against what it and 25 other states say would saddle them with the cost of providing benefits for millions of people newly eligible for work permits and government programs. The crux of the states’ legal argument is that the program, regardless of its merits, represents an unlawful power grab by the president. 
 
 “It is not whether this is the right solution or not,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), whose efforts have led lower courts to block the plan from being implemented. “It’s whether the president is acting outside his constitutional authority.” 
 
 [Obama takes immigration leniency plan to the Supreme Court] 
 
 It is true that justices will concentrate on whether Obama overstepped his authority and ignored legal procedures in November 2014 when he announced the immigration changes that Congress refused to enact. And the court also will consider whether Texas and the other states have the legal standing to interfere in immigration policy that the White House insists belongs to the executive. 
 
 But the societal impact of immigration is debated in the court filings. And there is a stark partisan and ideological divide in the case that Daniel Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), calls “Donald Trump huge.” 
 
 It is impossible to ignore the political backdrop as well. 
 
 President Obama's executive order would allow more than 4 million undocumented immigrants to stay in the U.S. for three years, but the Supreme Court could strike it down. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) 
 
 The case arrives during a presidential election year in which Trump promises a wall along the border to keep immigrants out and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is adamant that he would immediately reverse Obama’s plans should the court uphold them. On the Democratic side, both candidates have taken positions on immigration to the left of the president. 
 
 From California, a broad coalition of educators, religious leaders, business executives, politicians and police has coalesced around a message that it is time for a cease-fire. 
 
 “In the last half-century, California has attracted more immigrants — and done more to grapple with immigration policy — than any other state,” said one brief that contends that Obama’s plan would result in “stronger, safer, and more prosperous communities.” 
 
 It added, in a mellow tone, “The identity of a thriving city or state depends on the sense of community shared by its inhabitants and those inhabitants in turn draw their dignity and their identities from the social and religious communities they build.” 
 
 It is a far different statement from the one California voters made in 1994, when they overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187. It withheld from illegal immigrants public education, all manner of state services and non-emergency health care. The proposal was ruled unconstitutional. 
 
 A generation later, the state has gone through “all that bumpy stuff that the rest of the country is experiencing now,” said Manuel Pastor, executive director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration. 
 
 “We understand that undocumented folks are now part of the state’s fabric,” Pastor said. “One of six people you touch in the labor force is not here legally. I mean, my God, that’s how Southern California functions.” 
 
 Obama said it was a recognition of that reality that led him to announce the deportation “guidance” after House Republicans blocked an effort to pass a comprehensive immigration bill. 
 
 The plan is called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). It would allow illegal immigrants in those categories to remain in the country and apply for work permits if they have been here for at least five years and have not committed felonies or repeated misdemeanors. 
 
 More than 4 million immigrants could qualify for the program and a simultaneously announced expansion of an earlier program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which affects those who were brought to this country as children. 
 
 The Obama administration says it is doing nothing more than setting priorities about whom to deport. As a practical matter, it argues, Congress has given the administration only enough money to deport annually no more than about 400,000 of the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. 
 
 The money should be used to find and deport those with criminal violations, the administration says, rather than immigrants who have established a life here and “anchor families” that would be torn apart by deportation. 
 
 But a federal district judge in Texas and then an appeals court ruled 2-to-1 that the plan “is much more than nonenforcement: It would affirmatively confer ‘lawful presence’ and associated benefits on a class of unlawfully present aliens.” 
 
 The ruling was welcomed by Texas officials. But it is Obama’s message that resonates in California, where immigrants have become a powerful political force, even if many of them cannot vote. In Los Angeles County, for instance, home to more people than the entire state of Michigan, more than two-thirds of those younger than 18 have at least one parent who is an immigrant. 
 
 “There are lots of immigrants who can vote who are sympathetic to the plight of the undocumented,” Pastor said. Moreover, he said, there is a recognition of how integrated the communities have become. 
 
 “Forty percent of the people aged 25 to 64 who have a PhD in the state of California are immigrants,” he said. “And those high-skilled immigrants — for instance, in Silicon Valley — are often coupled with unskilled undocumented immigrants, because who takes care of their children? Who prepares their food? Who mows their lawns?” 
 
 A USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll published last month showed that nearly two-thirds of Californians think illegal immigration is a major problem in the state; 9 in 10 Republicans think it is either a “crisis” or major problem. 
 
 But more than three-fourths of voters said immigrants already here should be allowed to stay, and 60 percent said they should be allowed to apply for citizenship — something DAPA does not contemplate. 
 
 Even among Republicans, only 36 percent said immigrants should be required to leave, the poll indicated. 
 
 The political impact in a state where Democrats rule has been striking. The place that in the 1990s would have denied state benefits to any illegal immigrant just extended health-care coverage to the undocumented population 19 and younger. This was a compromise from a proposal to extend it to all. 
 
 Robin Hvidston, executive director of a group called We the People Rising, said her organization testified against the plan but lacks much support in the California legislature. 
 
 “We feel like we don’t have a voice in Sacramento,” she said. “We look with more hope to Congress.” 
 
 Solis, whose district of more than 2 million residents is more than 50 percent Latino, said the political climate has changed as the undocumented community has become more established. More than half of those in the county have been there more than 10 years. 
 
 “There’s more of a tolerance because there are so many people now who can say, ‘I know somebody who’s in that situation,’ ” she said in an interview in her office. “There are probably some people in this building who are in that situation. I’m pretty sure of it.” 
 
 She also credits a younger generation that has taken advantage of DACA and changes that allow them to pay in-state college tuition. 
 
 “They paid for their own education because they didn’t qualify for federal or even state aid at the time,” Solis said. “Why would you want to deport those kids? These are going to be the people who replace me or replace you, the bankers, the lawyers.” 
 
 She might have been talking about Anabel Cuevas. Her father, Eugenio, came from Mexico in 1989, followed by Anabel and her mother, Victoria, a year later. 
 
 Anabel Cuevas grew up in Pasadena and said she did not know she was undocumented until applying for college. She found that she could not accept the scholarship she was offered at a private college because she was not a citizen. 
 
 “My parents were always hard workers so we were always, I guess you could say, moving one step up, to a better apartment or whatever,” she said. Her mother has worked as a babysitter and housekeeper; her father is an independent construction contractor, specializing in tile and stone. 
 
 When the private college fell through, Anabel Cuevas went to California State University at Northridge. It cost her father about $70,000, he said. 
 
 She was able to get a work permit through DACA and now writes computer code for a high-tech company. And hers is one of the many “mixed” families in the county: She has the work permit, her parents are undocumented, and her younger brother, born here, is a citizen. 
 
 So the Cuevases would qualify. But nothing is certain. The DAPA program may not survive the court challenge. If it does, it could still be revoked. And the deferral from deportation under DAPA is only temporary. 
 
 But she said it is worth speaking out and being identified. She feels there is little danger of being deported in L.A. County. 
 
 “But we’re so close as a family, I’ve told [her parents], ‘If you guys get deported, I’m coming with you, and we’ll start a business somewhere else,’ ” she said. “My experience as an immigrant is that nothing is guaranteed.” ||||| “The chief justice, who has spoken recently about how the confirmation process might affect the court’s stature, may be especially troubled by a 4-4 split in this case,” Professor Strauss said. A ruling based on standing, he said, “would wipe the slate clean, so the program could be considered in the future by a full Supreme Court.” 
 
 Mr. Obama’s plan would allow more than four million unauthorized immigrants who are parents of citizens or lawful permanent residents to apply for a program shielding them from deportation and allowing them to work legally. In the short term, a ruling to dismiss the case on standing grounds would at least temporarily save the plan. 
 
 A tie vote, on the other hand, would leave in place an injunction blocking the plan and probably deny Mr. Obama any chance of resurrecting it. 
 
 The case, United States v. Texas, No. 15-674, was brought by Texas and 25 other states, which say the plan went beyond what Congress had authorized. Lower courts have sided with Texas. 
 
 The trial judge ruled that the Obama administration should have given notice of the plan and sought public comments on its new program. The appeals court affirmed that ruling and added a broader one: The program, it said, also exceeded Mr. Obama’s statutory authority. 
 
 The Supreme Court asked the parties to address the even broader question of whether Mr. Obama had violated his constitutional obligations to enforce the nation’s laws. But the court must first address whether Texas has suffered the sort of direct and concrete injury that gave it standing to sue in the first place. 
 
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 “Chief Justice Roberts will be very skeptical of Texas’s standing claims,” said Tara Leigh Grove, a professor of law at William & Mary and the author of an article on lawsuits by states against the federal government to be published next month in The Cornell Law Review. 
 
 Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas, said his state had brought the case to settle fundamental questions about presidential power. 
 
 “Our goal really was pretty basic: defend the Constitution and stop President Obama’s lawlessness,” he said. 
 
 A White House spokeswoman declined to comment. In court papers, the administration has defended its plan as lawful, humane and valuable. 
 
 A ruling based on standing would sidestep all of those issues. Even lawyers who believe that Texas has demonstrated that it has standing say they are not sure how the chief justice will vote. 
 
 “It’s no secret that the chief justice is not a fan of expansive standing doctrine,” said Jonathan H. Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University who filed a brief supporting Texas on the standing issue. 
 
 Professor Adler, who was an architect of a challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s nationwide tax subsidies that the Supreme Court rejected last year in a majority opinion from Chief Justice Roberts, added that there was a second reason to worry about the chief justice’s vote in the Texas case. 
 
 “Ways of disposing of cases without addressing the merits do become more attractive on an eight-member court,” he said. 
 
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 Texas says it has standing to sue based on the budget shortfalls it would sustain if many unauthorized immigrants applied for driver’s licenses. The state sets fees for driver’s licenses below what they cost and ties eligibility for them to federal determinations about who is lawfully present in the country. 
 
 “Our standing argument is based on the cost of driver’s licenses, which is obviously not part of our budget at this point,” said Mr. Paxton. “The Legislature meets only every other year, and they put together a budget and all of the driver’s licenses come out of the budget, and there’s no money for it. So our standing is based on that cost.” 
 
 Experts on standing law have sharply differing views about whether the cost of driver’s licenses, a consequence of the state’s own choices about fees and eligibility, can confer standing. “Such self-imposed ‘injury’ has never provided a ticket to federal court,” Walter Dellinger, a former acting United States solicitor general in the Clinton administration, wrote in a supporting brief. Chief Justice Roberts cited Mr. Dellinger’s views on standing in an opinion in an earlier case. 
 
 Ernest A. Young, a law professor at Duke who filed a supporting brief for Texas, said the state has plainly been injured. “All one has to accept for Texas to have standing,” he said, “is that governments have interests in administering their own legal regimes, and that because these legal regimes are intertwined with federal law in various ways, federal actions often do affect state public administration in a cognizable way.” 
 
 Chief Justice Roberts wrote a sharp dissent in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, a 5-to-4 decision in 2007 that said Massachusetts had standing to challenge the Bush administration’s decision not to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. Relaxing standing requirements “because asserted injuries are pressed by a state,” the chief justice wrote, “has no basis in our jurisprudence.” 
 
 The “true goal for this litigation may be more symbolic than anything else,” he wrote. “The constitutional role of the courts, however, is to decide concrete cases — not to serve as a convenient forum for policy debates.” 
 
 Standing is a neutral legal principle that applies to the right and left alike, he wrote in an influential 1993 law review article. 
 
 “It restricts the right of conservative public interest groups to challenge liberal agency action or inaction,” he wrote, “just as it restricts the right of liberal public interest groups to challenge conservative agency action or inaction.” 
 
 Mr. Dellinger said a rigorous approach to standing was consistent with Chief Justice Roberts’s statement at his confirmation hearings that judges should aspire to be umpires, whose only job is to call balls and strikes. 
 
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 “Before any judge begins calling balls and strikes,” Mr. Dellinger said, “he must first make sure the batter at the plate is an actual player and not just a fan who ran on the field.”
– A sweeping plan by President Obama to protect immigrants from deportation might be in trouble. Arguments in the Supreme Court on Monday suggested justices were headed for a 4-4 split, reports the Los Angeles Times. If that proves true when the decision is announced in June, it's bad news for the administration because it means a lower-court ruling blocking the plan would remain in place, reports the Hill. Justice Anthony Kennedy sounded as if he thought that Obama overstepped his authority when he granted protection to about 4 million immigrants, mostly the parents of young US citizens. "That's a legislative, not an executive act," said Kennedy of the move. "It's as if the president is setting the policy and the Congress is executing it. That seems upside down." Some coverage: The AP isn't so sure about Chief Justice John Roberts' position. He "asked questions suggesting he could side with the administration if there were a small change in the proposed programs." And in a preview before the arguments, the New York Times said conservatives were worried Roberts would avoid a big-picture decision and "disappoint them again in a challenge to another major Obama initiative." The Washington Post looks at the part of the nation that will be affected perhaps more than any other: Los Angeles County. The Huffington Post talks with "Jane Doe #2," a mother who is part of the case. Read an explainer of the case, and Obama's initiative, at Vox.