House to Vote on Opposing Executive Amnesty at Supreme Court

The House will vote on whether to file a brief in opposition to President Obama’s executive amnesty with the Supreme Court.

House Speaker Paul Ryan announced Tuesday that “in the coming weeks” House Republicans will be taking their “next step to stop the president’s executive overreach.”

“The House will vote on whether to file an amicus brief in Supreme Court opposing the president’s executive amnesty,” Ryan told reporters “This is a very extraordinary step. In fact, it has never been done before.”

The Supreme Court agreed to hear Texas and 25 states’ challenge to the Obama administration’s 2014 executive amnesty programs in January.

To date, the states have been successful at the district court and appeals court levels in blocking the executive amnesty programs— which would grant millions of illegal immigrants de facto legal status and work permits — from taking effect.

“This executive amnesty is a direct attack on the Congress’s Article I powers under our Constitution,” Ryan continued Tuesday. “This is a question between Article I and Article II. The president is not permitted to write law. Only Congress is.”

“The House will make that very, very clear, and we will do so as an institution on behalf of the American people, on behalf of representative self-government,” he added.