Opinion ID: 78442
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Blake v. CarboneAn Offense-Based Approach

Text: In Blake, the Second Circuit declined to accord deference to the BIA's interpretation of the statutory counterpart rule, rejected the categorical approach as violative of Francis, and set out its own offense-based approach for determining a deportee's eligibility for § 212(c) relief. After reciting Chevron 's familiar mandate, the court concluded that because the statutory counterpart rule is a creature of constitutional avoidance, arising from the ramifications of a prior constitutional decision of this court, rather than the original statute concerning whose interpretation the Attorney General has conceded expertise, deferring to the BIA's determination of equal protection would constitute, in part, an abdication of its responsibilit[y] to uphold the Constitution. Blake, 489 F.3d at 100 (quotation marks and citation omitted). In rejecting the categorical approach, the Second Circuit observed that the BIA's emphasis on the need for substantially similar language in grounds of deportation and grounds of exclusion was strange because Congress never contemplated that its grounds of deportation would have any connection with the grounds of exclusion. Id. at 102. As asserted by the court, because the history of § 212(c) relief for deportees began not with an expression of congressional intent but rather with Francis [,] ... Congress did not employ similar terms when writing the grounds of exclusion and grounds of deportation because it had no need to, making it an exercise in futility to search for similar language to gauge whether equal protection is being afforded. Id. (citation omitted). The court also took issue with the BIA's incidental overlap language [10] and concluded that the BIA's requirement that all or substantially all of the offenses under a particular ground of deportation must also fall under the counterpart ground of exclusion was not supported by Francis : The touchstone in Francis was the irrelevant and fortuitous circumstance of traveling abroad recently; the decision did not consider whether equal protection requires that all or even most offenses falling under a particular ground of deportation must also fall under the counterpart ground of exclusion. In short, eligibility for relief in Francis turned on whether the lawful permanent resident's offense could trigger § 212(c) were he in exclusion proceedings, not how his offense was categorized as a ground of deportation. Id. (citation omitted). The Second Circuit concluded its opinion in Blake by staking out the contours of its offense-based approach to the statutory counterpart test: [P]etitioners' eligibility for a § 212(c) waiver must turn on their particular criminal offenses. If the offense that renders a lawful permanent resident deportable would render a similarly situated lawful permanent resident excludable, the deportable lawful permanent resident is eligible for a waiver of deportation. Id. at 103.