Judulang v. Holder

Supreme Court of the United States · 2011 · Administrative Law

Administrative LawImmigrationArbitrary and Capricious ReviewAPAarbitrary and capriciousreasoned explanationBIA§ 212(c)

Facts

Judulang entered the United States from the Philippines in 1974 at age eight and continuously lived here as a lawful permanent resident. In 1988, after participating in a fight in which another person killed someone, he pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and received a suspended six-year sentence with immediate probation. In 2005, after a later theft-related plea, DHS initiated deportation proceedings and charged him with having committed an aggravated felony involving a crime of violence based on the 1988 manslaughter conviction. The BIA held that he could not seek § 212(c) relief because the charged deportation ground did not have a comparable exclusion ground.

Issue

Whether the BIA's comparable-grounds rule for deciding when deportable lawful permanent residents may apply for former § 212(c) discretionary relief is arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. More specifically, the question was whether the agency could make eligibility turn on whether the charged deportation ground sufficiently matched a statutory exclusion ground.

Rule

Agency action is arbitrary and capricious if it is not based on relevant factors or lacks a reasoned explanation tied to the purposes of the governing statutory scheme. In this context, the BIA may not make § 212(c) eligibility in deportation cases turn on the chance correspondence between statutory deportation and exclusion categories when that comparison has no connection to an alien's fitness to remain in the country or to the rational operation of the immigration laws.

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One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.

The Federal Residency Review Board in Washington, D.C., administers a grandfathered waiver for longtime permanent residents with pre-1997 guilty pleas. It adopts a rule making waiver eligibility depend on whether the charged removal category has a close textual counterpart in a separate list of border-entry bars, without asking whether that correspondence says anything about the resident's conduct, rehabilitation, or ties to the United States.

A court reviewing the rule under the APA should most likely hold that the rule is

Explanation. The majority held that even under narrow APA review, an agency must engage in reasoned decisionmaking based on relevant factors. A rule that makes eligibility rise or fall on the chance match between deportation and exclusion-style categories is arbitrary because that comparison says nothing about the person's fitness to remain or the rational operation of the immigration laws.