Deportation Law Too Vague, Rules Supreme Court

Ruling in a Bay Area case, the Supreme Court, with a crucial vote from Justice Neil Gorsuch, struck down a federal immigration law Tuesday that required deportation for any noncitizen convicted of a felony that posed a "substantial risk" of violence.

The 1996 law is unconstitutional because its wording is so vague that it sets no clear standard for either judges or immigrants on which crimes it covers, Justice Elena Kagan said in the 5-4 ruling. She said it was similar to another law the court had overturned in 2015 requiring a 15-year prison sentence for some felons whose past convictions were for crimes posing a "serious potential risk" of violence -- language the court also found unconstitutionally murky.

The 2015 ruling was written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a leading member of the court's conservative wing. Gorsuch, appointed by President Trump last year to succeed Scalia, had been unswervingly conservative in his decisions until Tuesday, when he invoked his predecessor in a strongly worded opinion that provided the court's more liberal justices with a decisive fifth vote.

"Vague laws invite arbitrary power," Gorsuch said, citing legal history from the time of the nation's founding and earlier, as Scalia often did. "The law's silence (in defining the crimes that require deportation) leaves judges to their intuitions and the people to their fate."

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