Judge Hanen DACA update

A new update posted today: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket...es-of-america/

Our friend ChatGPT here to help us understand this

📌 Context
This document is a court order from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, following instructions from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals regarding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

⚖️ Key Background
The Fifth Circuit ruled that the DACA program is substantively unlawful.

It sent the case back ("remanded") to the District Court for further proceedings.

The appeals court told the District Court to:

Limit the injunction to Texas only, not nationwide.

Honor the DACA program’s severability clause (meaning parts of the program might be preserved even if others are struck down).

Importantly, the Fifth Circuit gave the District Court wide discretion to address any related issues on remand.

📍 Main Questions the District Court Wants Addressed
The judge is now inviting all parties involved in the lawsuit to submit additional written arguments (briefs) on specific legal issues, including:

Standing of Other States:

Only Texas has claimed that DACA causes it financial harm ("pocketbook injury").

Should other states now be allowed or required to show that DACA harms them too?

Do they even want to?

Impact of a New Supreme Court Case:

The Court wants to know whether the recent decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc. (2025) affects this case.

Implementing the Narrowed Injunction:

How should the new, Texas-only injunction actually work?

For example:

How to determine who lives in Texas (e.g., mailing address vs. permanent residence)?

How to track if someone moves in or out of Texas?

Severability of DACA:

The judge notes that even without DACA, DHS can still choose not to deport certain people.

How should this fact affect the way the injunction is written?

Constitutional Concerns:

If DACA recipients are treated differently inside and outside of Texas, does this raise Equal Protection or Due Process issues under the Constitution?

Other Issues:

Since the Fifth Circuit imposed no limits on what the District Court can examine, the judge is open to any other issues the parties think are relevant.

📅 Deadlines
Parties who want to submit briefs must do so by August 29, 2025.

Responses to those briefs are due by September 19, 2025.

Optional replies may be filed by September 26, 2025.

If a party does not wish to participate, they are not required to file anything.

✅ Summary
The judge is preparing to reshape the court’s injunction against DACA in line with new appeals court rulings and recent Supreme Court decisions. They’re inviting all involved parties to weigh in on how this should happen and whether any new legal questions need to be considered—especially now that only Texas has officially shown harm and the injunction will apply only to Texas.

Only Texas.

Do you here not realize they are asking "all parties", i.e., those who are defending DACA to produce essentially risk management scenarios on behalf of the administration's position and the state of Texas?

This is doing discovery for them for free.

"If DACA recipients are treated differently inside and outside of Texas, does this raise Equal Protection or Due Process issues under the Constitution?"

TX cares about equal protection for Dreamers? Right...

I thought this was settled, but apparently not. Looks like they have to work around the technicalities of a program that is considered unlawful except for reliance reasons and has continued to survive.