Federal judge imposes sweeping sanctions on DOJ, requires ethics classes for litigators in 26 states
Blasting the U.S. Department of Justice for its earlier conduct in a major immigration case that is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, a federal judge in Brownsville, Texas, on Thursday imposed sweeping sanctions on the department’s litigators and demanded a remedial response from U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch.
“[T]he Justice Department lawyers knew the true facts and misrepresented those facts to the citizens of the 26 plaintiff states, their lawyers and this court on multiple occasions,” wrote U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in his Thursday opinion (PDF),
It requires all DOJ lawyers who litigate in the 26 states to take three hours of annual ethics training for the next five years. It also calls on Lynch to provide to the court within 60 days a “comprehensive plan” detailing how such unethical conduct will be prevented in the future among DOJ lawyers and counsel at its Office of Professional Responsibility and appoint an individual to take responsibility for ensuring DOJ compliance with his order.
The Daily Caller, the National Law Journal, the New York Times (reg. req.) and the Wall Street Journal Law Blog (sub. req.) have stories.
A spokesman told reporters Thursday that the DOJ “strongly disagrees with the order” but did not offer specifics.
At issue in the case is a challenge launched by 26 states after President Barack Obama announced in 2014 that he planned to expand a 2012 program that protects young people from deportation if they were brought to the U.S. as children and certain conditions apply. In addition to expanding its protection of young people by granting three-year reprieves instead of two-year reprieves, the president said he intended to delay deportation of parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, too. However, Hanen last year blocked implementation of the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents program, as well as the three-year reprieves.
His injunction was upheld by a federal appeals court and is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, Hanen is taking issue with what he says his court was told earlier by DOJ lawyers about implementation of the expanded program—information he says he took into account when issuing the injunction. Although the judge says the DOJ represented that the U.S. wasn’t implementing the new rules announced by the president in 2014, in fact it began issuing three-year renewal reprieves as early as November 2014 to those who qualified for protection from deportation under the 2012 program.
Some 100,000 individuals received the three-year reprieves, according to the judge. before he issued his injunction in February 2015. His sanctions order also demands a list of the names of those in the 26 states who got the three-year deferrals , which is to be kept under seal until the Supreme Court rules in the case.
After the injunction issued, DOJ lawyers informed Hanen about the three-year reprieves. However, not alerting him beforehand to the fact that the new 2014 rules were being implemented violated their duty of candor to the tribunal, the judge says.
He directed most of his ire at DOJ lawyers in Washington, D.C., and noted that the misconduct occurred before Lynch took office, the National Law Journal reports.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “5th Circuit upholds injunction blocking Obama’s executive action on immigration”
