Prof. Hickman Quoted by Bloomberg on Supreme Court DACA Decision Implications

Prof. Kristin Hickman was quoted in a Bloomberg article, “Supreme Court DACA Ruling Could Sway Environmental Permits’ Fate,” regarding certain administrative law implications of the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California. The Court in Regents rejected DHS’s rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for lack of adequate contemporaneous agency, relying in part on a precedent known as Chenery I to disregard a second agency memorandum offering additional justifications for DHS’s action. The article focused particularly on the significance of that part of the Court's reasoning for a remedy for Administrative Procedure Act violations known as remand without vacatur, which is often used by lower courts in environmental cases to give agencies a second chance to explain their actions. Prof. Hickman was quoted as saying that the remand without vacatur remedy has always been in tension with Chenery I and that circuit courts considering the Court’s reasoning in Regents might be more cautious about using that remedy when agencies fail to explain themselves adequately.