Category: News Feeds

The elimination of this definition not only invites health care insurers and providers to discriminate against LGBTQ people seeking health care, but it also introduces substantial confusion among health care providers and insurers regarding their legal obligations and the right of the populations they serve to be free from sex discrimination, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, which held that discrimination based on transgender status or sexual orientation ‘necessarily entails discrimination based on sex.’ However, undeterred from their goal to foster discrimination against LGBTQ people, HHS published the Revised Rule, without any changes, four days after the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock.

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The Revised Rule, if allowed to go into effect, will undermine the progress achieved so far in eradicating health care discrimination against LGBTQ people in a broad array of health care programs and entities by inviting health care insurers and providers once again to discriminate against them, while also discouraging LGBTQ people from seeking health care in the first instance.

—- Excerpt from a complaint filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by attorneys with Steptoe & Johnson and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund challenging the Trump administration rule changing the definition of “sex discrimination” in the Affordable Care Act to exclude transgender people, and citing the Supreme Court’s new decision in Bostock.

It was a wild weekend at the Justice Department, so let’s see if we have this straight, shall we?

Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was such a great guy that the Bill Barr offered him multiple jobs at Main Justice, including head of the Civil Division now that Jody Hunt is leaving. But for whatever reason, Berman thought it was more important for him to stay at SDNY, so he turned Bill Barr down.

But Barr’s good buddy Jay Clayton, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer who heads the SEC and has virtually zero criminal experience, has been saying that he wants to go back to New York, and, now that you mention it, he might like to run one of the biggest prosecutorial offices in the country. Just for funsies, yaknow?

So Bill Barr, who lacks any authority to hire or fire U.S. Attorneys, announced on Friday night that Berman was stepping down and Clayton would be nominated for the job. This despite the fact that the Senate Judiciary Committee still honors blue slips from home state senators for U.S. Attorney appointments, meaning that Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand would both have to sign off on Clayton before he could get a vote. Which should happen about the same time that hell freezes over.

But in the meantime, Berman, who was competent to run the Civil Division, needed to GTFO of SDNY immediately because, uhhh, reasons. So Barr planned to move Craig Carpenito, a Chris Christie ally and the current U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, into the top job at SDNY until Clayton’s confirmation. Which is scheduled for the fifth of never.

And none of this had anything to do with the multiple pending SDNY investigations into Rudy Giuliani, Deutsche Bank, Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, or Halkbank — that’s the investigation Trump promised the Turkish president he’d disappear, according to John Bolton’s book.

“Trump then told Erdoğan he would take care of things, explaining that the southern district prosecutors were not his people but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people,” Bolton wrote.

Riiiiiiiiiiiight. This all sounds completely above board.

Pretty weird that Berman responded to Barr’s announcement by tweeting that he had not, in fact, resigned and would be staying in the job until the Senate confirmed his replacement.

At which point, AdminLaw Twitter went wild, since Berman’s name was never submitted to the Judiciary Committee in the first place  — probably because of the blue slip issue — and he was permanently installed by the District’s judges when his 120-day temporary appointment was about to expire. Did that mean that only the judges could replace him? A bunch of lawyers who haven’t left the house in months spent the night discussing it, which is what passes for fun in the age of covid.

In the end, Barr blinked. But he did it in his usual sanctimoniously aggressive fashion, writing, “Unfortunately, with your statement of last night, you have chosen public spectacle over public service. Because you have declared that you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so.”

Because the honorable thing would have been to acquiesce to Bill Barr’s public lie and allow him to circumvent the nomination process, we guess? What a credit to the profession is our Attorney General!

Presumably, Trump did sign a letter officially firing Berman some time before taking the stage in Tulsa on Saturday for his amazing comeback rally (AHEM). Although, as usual, President Bigly Brain failed to stick the landing.

But buried in the bluster of Barr’s letter was a major concession.

“By operation of law, the Deputy United States Attorney, Audrey Strauss, will become the acting United States Attorney,” he wrote, “and I anticipate that she will serve in that capacity until a permanent successor is in place.”

So, Carpenito won’t be coming in to do, or not do, whatever it is that Barr had planned for SDNY. The AG had already managed to get control of the DC office by pushing out Jessie Liu, the former US Attorney for DC, and replacing her with his good buddy Timothy Shea. After which, the sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone was withdrawn and the Department dismissed the case against Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Which is probably not a coincidence.

But it ain’t happening in the Sovereign District of New York, thanks to lifelong Republican Geoffrey Berman, who announced Saturday night that he accepted the firing and had confidence in Strauss, a career SDNY prosecutor who spent the past thirty years in the office.

Once again, democracy is saved by one person standing up and refusing to budge. Well, that and the Trump administration’s ability to screw up a two car funeral procession. Thank goodness for incompetence!

Geoffrey Berman is leaving office immediately after standoff with Trump administration  [CNN]

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Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

WASHINGTON: Some 4,300 shipyard workers at a Maine shipyard voted Sunday to strike, stopping work on six new Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and the last of three Zumwalt destroyers.

Members of the Machinists’ Union Local S6 will put down their tools at midnight Sunday, after 87 percent of them voted to reject a three-year contract from General Dynamics Bath Iron Works to keep the shipyard running. 

The union members rejected what the company called its “last, best, and final” offer last week. The company’s proposal would have given the production workers a yearly 3 percent raise, but the sticking point for the union was the hiring of subcontractors, and a proposal to change preferences for shifts and locations that the union saw as an assault on seniority. But the Local S6 union posted on their Website: “We are officially on strike. Stand strong. United we’re one. Divided we’re done!”  

The six destroyers and Zumwalt in the docks at Bath are already six months behind schedule, according to BIW President Dirk Lesko. It’s hard to estimate the strike’s effects since we don’t know how long it will last.

The work stoppage comes as another blow to General Dynamics. In April, the company lost the bid for the $795 million contract to build the first 10 of a new class of guided missile frigates when Wisconsin-based Fincantieri Marinette Marine won. The company also lost out on a hard-fought effort to build the Coast Guard’s Offshore Patrol Cutters in 2016.

General Dynamics issued a statement on its website recognizing the decision: “We obviously are disappointed by this result, but are prepared should a strike occur.”

Speaking with reporters late last week, Navy acquisition chief James Geurts was asked about the potential for the strike to put the seven ships even further behind schedule. He steered clear of getting involved in the talks between the two sides, but made clear the Navy expects to get its ships delivered on time — something that looks less likely the longer the strike drags on. 

“It is critical for our Navy that we get ships, we get them on the schedule we contract for them, and that we have high confidence in our shipbuilders to deliver,” Geurts said. The Navy is investing in the shipyard “to help them continue to modernize and bring down the cost, and deliver ships just like we’re doing with all our other shipyards.” 

The strike comes as the Navy is working on plans to increase the number of manned and unmanned ships it has, as China steams ahead with a massive shipbuilding effort. In an unreleased document obtained by Breaking D last week, the Marine Corps expressed concern that in the event of any conflict, China could replace its losses at sea faster than the United States could.  

Readiness concerns have also led the Navy to take the unprecedented step of calling up over 1,600 Reservists earlier this month to fill labor shortages at shipyards repairing aircraft carriers and submarines in a desperate effort to get them back out to sea as soon as possible. 

Navy spokesman Capt. Danny Hernandez said in an emailed statement Sunday that “the work performed by our industry partners is critical to our Fleet. To avoid disruptions, the Navy is hopeful leaders at General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers come to agreement on the current contract negotiations soon.”

Lesko told me last month that the company had fallen behind schedule in part due to COVID-related absences and changed work schedules, but the main problem was the retirement of so many experienced tradesmen over the past several years.

“Last year we hired 1,800 people, which was the most hired for 30 years I think,” Lesko said. “We probably would have hired 500 or 600 more people last year if we could have.”

Those new employees are being trained up to replace the retirees, slowing some projects down. “Those people are leaving in groups, requiring us to replace them in big groups,” Lesko said.

More and more attorneys are capitalizing on technology to better run their practices or start a practice. Today, more attorneys than ever are considering practicing remotely as the pandemic has forced unprecedented work-from-home scenarios. For many attorneys trying to build a practice, the current lack of face-to-face interaction is a major roadblock.

At the same time, people and businesses across the country are in need of legal representation but don’t always know how to find it. Attorney search sites are hard to navigate, don’t give enough information and still leave you with the burden of scheduling and meeting. They promote the attorneys who pay fees for a listing, not necessarily the best attorneys. For much of the public, millions of legal matters go unaddressed every year, which adds up to an untapped legal market of billions of dollars, despite attorneys who want to work and clients who want representation.

A new player in the legal tech market is aiming to solve everyday challenges lawyers face. The folks at XIRA have created an online platform designed to bring clients to you, manage your schedule and help you book your free time. They also expand your market reach, reduce your overhead and help you get paid faster.

How XIRA Works for Clients

XIRA is easy to use and free of any extraneous marketing, advertising, or other clutter. Users start by simply searching for attorneys who practice in particular areas of law in their jurisdiction.

The search results appear as a list of potential attorneys, each with a name, photo, rating, charge for initial consultations (some of which are free), standard hourly rates, and earliest availability to meet. On the left of the results screen, there are filters that users can toggle to obtain a perfectly tailored combination of price, fee structure, availability, expertise, and more to meet their specific criteria.

Click any individual attorney in the search results, and users can see an attorney’s bio, areas of law they practice, education, license information (which links directly to the bar association if the user wants to confirm they’re in good standing), languages, and social media links. Users also see the attorney’s calendar for the next 30 days with available meeting times.

If users like what they see, they can instantly book either the first available time or another free time that’s convenient for them. Making an appointment with a new attorney is that simple!

There’s never any fee for clients to use XIRA – all they pay for is the legal services actually obtained. To register, the user simply verifies their email address and adds credit card information for future use. If the attorney that is selected has no initial consultation fee, the user doesn’t get charged!

XIRA sends a confirmation email with information on what to expect, what documents the user should have ready, and a link to the meeting. Scheduling the first consultation is easy and intuitive, and there’s no additional software needed.

Equally Easy for Attorneys to Join

Just enter your email, bar information, add your photo, select your practice areas, hourly rates or fee structures associated with each of your practice areas, initial consult charges (if any), and connect your calendar. XIRA can be synced with Google, Microsoft and iCal to avoid scheduling conflicts.

Once XIRA verifies that you’re licensed and in good standing, you’re open for business

and potential clients can find and book appointments on your calendar. The entire process to join XIRA takes less than 10 minutes and couldn’t be easier.

There are tools to help you promote and increase your visibility and to let clients get to know you better.  Build your bio, add a video bio, and connect social links.

Attorneys always have full control over their calendars and can set the hours and days they want to work. You can also designate how much lead time you want before new appointments (15 minutes > up to two days) and whether you’d like to have a time buffer between appointments.

As with clients, attorneys pay nothing to sign up for XIRA. There are no monthly fees, subscriptions or contracts. That means there’s zero cost to get yourself up and running and in front of potential clients.  XIRA only makes money when attorneys make money.  Learn more about XIRA’s straightforward price list here.

XIRA Handles the Business Side of Practicing Law

It’s no secret that law school may teach you to be a great attorney but does almost nothing to teach you how to run a business. Many attorneys in small or solo practices spend almost half their time on things like client acquisition, office management, and billing — things other than practicing law.

XIRA’s platform handles all those “non-law” things for you. Take billing, for example. Attorneys enter their activities and expenses directly into XIRA.  XIRA creates the invoices, presents them to clients, and collects payment from the credit card the client has on file. Attorneys can specify whether they want to invoice monthly, weekly, or via micro-billing; meaning that every charge or expense entered into XIRA will immediately be invoiced to the client. Micro-billing avoids clients getting sticker shock each month, increases attorney transparency, and helps with cash flow.

XIRA also functions as free marketing for attorneys. XIRA markets on Google, Facebook, other sites and television to promote attorneys on its platform, and even offers a specialist to help you promote your XIRA profile on social media — all for free. Again, XIRA doesn’t collect any money until a client schedules an appointment. Essentially, XIRA allows attorneys to become entrepreneurs without all the risks and costs that usually come with it.

Finally, XIRA makes connection and collaboration a breeze. Appointments are scheduled with simple clicks, rather than the back-and-forth between clients, attorneys, and assistants which was traditionally required. Documents can be stored and shared via secure, dedicated servers that essentially function as secure virtual file cabinets for each of your clients.

XIRA makes doing business so easy, you’ll want to invite your existing clients onto the platform. Thankfully, XIRA lets you do just that with a few clicks, allowing you to streamline your practice and bring it online and into a secure, virtual environment where you can grow your business and expand your reach. And, there are no setup charges for your existing clients.

Tapping Into an Unserved Market

Whether you’re a new attorney, a small firm, a solo practitioner, or an attorney who’s been inactive and looking to get back into the game, XIRA is the solution for reaching new clients and growing your business. As a free platform for users who might otherwise not know how to find the attorneys they need, XIRA allows you to have a broader reach than you could ever likely achieve on your own.

The way we do business has evolved. Your practice should evolve with it so you can finally achieve that work/life balance you’ve always wanted. Let XIRA do the heavy lifting, so you can focus on what you enjoy doing most – practicing law.

The saga of Robert M. Schulman — former intellectual property litigation partner at Hunton & Williams and Arent Fox, who was convicted of conspiracy and securities fraud in 2017 — has seemingly reached its conclusion. Schulman was already sentenced to three years probation, fined $50,000 and ordered to forfeit about $15,500 and required to serve 2,000 hours of community service, but now the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ad hoc committee on professional responsibility has weighed in on the matter. In a negotiated discipline, Schulman has agreed to a three year suspension, retroactive to June 28, 2018.

Way back in 2010 Schulman allegedly got drunk before sharing inside information about a planned M&A deal with a friend and investment adviser, Tibor Klein. He hinted that his client King Pharmaceuticals was going to merge with Pfizer, saying, “It would be nice to be King for a day.”

In a statement to ABA Journal, Schulman points to a life beyond Biglaw and his previous patent law speciality:

Schulman said he was grateful that the hearing committee and a case manager “expended the effort to look beneath the surface into the specifics of my case.”

“The patent office has likewise handled this matter in a very professional manner,” he said. “Should the D.C. Court of Appeals agree to the settlement, I do not know that I would practice again, though it would be nice to have that as an option.

“Even after the passage of more than three years since the verdict, I still wrestle with what has happened. But it did happen. I have tried to learn and grow from it and not become embittered. I am grateful for the support of family and friends who saw me through this. There are a lot of great people, both clients and former colleagues, whom I miss dearly. I am still in touch with many of them.

“I’ve tried to use my extra time in a meaningful way. I’ve become a master gardener and am pursuing a master’s in agriculture and life sciences from Virginia Tech. I’ve also been teaching ESL classes.

“At this point, I’m enjoying my vegetable gardening, including a lot of volunteering, my grandchildren and, with any luck, some baseball soon. There is in fact life after patent law after all!”

I don’t want to say it’s dire, but he is looking forward to baseball y’all.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

“Do I need to learn to code?” It’s the one question I consistently get from law students and lawyers alike, usually with a dreadful grimace. It’s understandable — these are people who spent three years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars learning one skill, and now they’re being told that skill is worthless without also having a completely unrelated one.

There are, of course, an unlimited number of answers and opinions on the topic, varying from company to company. So, I crowdsourced the answer in my global network.

I asked: “Do lawyers generally need to learn how to code?” I received the following results to the three choices.

1. Yes, lawyering & coding = ❤️ 31%
2. No need for lawyers to code! 65%
3. I do NOT want to vote! 4%

The Enthusiastic Yeses

On the one hand, Shari E. Belitz CEO of Shari Belitz Communications, summarized it: “If you asked me in 1990 if lawyers needed to learn email, I would have said no. If you asked in 1995 if lawyers needed to know how to type rather than dictate a memo, I would have said no. If you asked me in 2019 if lawyers would need to learn how to use an online platform to mediate, I would have said no. So, do lawyers need to learn to code? Yes. Learning to code provides the added bonus of sharpening logic skills, so is not just a utilitarian function.”

Some even reassured me that learning to code for lawyers is a doable, even enjoyable, endeavor. Dina Eisenberg, a law firm leader coach, explained: “I learned HTML over a long weekend. Not only am I able to do simple coding myself, I learned about my grit and raised my confidence. Those insights help me better serve my clients.”

The Pragmatic Noes

On the other hand, Rachita Maker, head of legal operations at Tata Communications, said: “I don’t think lawyers need to code. Lawyers need to know how to use tech to make their work more efficient. They need to learn to speak to technologists on their problem areas and how solutions should be designed.”

Similarly, MacAllistre (Alli) Henry, corporate counsel at Contentful, explained, “I believe in comparative advantage — as a tech lawyer, it’s important for me to understand issues that arise in coding — integrating open source, compatibility, etc. — but I do not need to be the coder.”

Likewise, Jack Shepherd, an associate at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, detailed five reasons why lawyers don’t need to code. He suggested that many lawyers “won’t do as good a job,” “lawyers add to software builds by being the voice of the lawyer, not the developer,” “coding is only one part of a software,” “coding and design are even less important than identifying business problems that need solving, and being strategic around how the effort,” and it is incorrect to assume that “things like marketing, positioning and communication are easy or less important.”

And, Other More-Measured Suggestions

Of course, others explained that there are many answers between “Yes” and “No.” This is, of course, an expected result when one polls lawyers.

Dr. David Cowan, a lecturer at Maynooth University and editor-at-large at Global Legal Post explained: “I voted no need to code, but I would have voted for a different answer if offered: Lawyers need some introductory teaching on coding.” He continued, “From this, they will gain important insights into the relationship between law and technology, to which I would add for some law students it will be useful for them to learn coding as there will be good job prospects for them to work with law in new ways.”

And, of course, there is a thoughtful “it depends” answer. For example, Chris Weimer, a member at Pirkey Barber, said, “To give a lawyerly answer: it depends. I’ve seen some very compelling visual representations of data created by lawyers who code. But generally, I think it’s more efficient to provide ideas to developers to implement them. And then there are some specialized practices where being able to read code is crucial, but those are not the norm.”

The rich commentary that accompanied the vote suggests a difficulty in distinguishing between pragmatic specialization, say in the area of law, and pressure to be technically competent. In the current state of the industry, knowing how to code is generally a skill that will provide an advantage to individual lawyers in some specialties, but as a whole, according to the experts, is not totally necessary — yet. But why not be prepared for the future of the industry? As lawyers, don’t we always want to be innovating, thinking creatively, and prepared for all eventual outcomes?

For now, the question rests with each lawyer: while there is a general agreement that technical competence is a must for the twenty-first century where does the individual lawyer draw a line in deciding how far to go?

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Olga V. Mack is the CEO of Parley Pro, a next-generation contract management company that has pioneered online negotiation technology. Olga embraces legal innovation and had dedicated her career to improving and shaping the future of law. She is convinced that the legal profession will emerge even stronger, more resilient, and more inclusive than before by embracing technology. Olga is also an award-winning general counsel, operations professional, startup advisor, public speaker, adjunct professor, and entrepreneur. She founded the Women Serve on Boards movement that advocates for women to participate on corporate boards of Fortune 500 companies. She authored Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat and Fundamentals of Smart Contract Security. You can follow Olga on Twitter @olgavmack.

During last week’s installment of the Maine State Bar Association’s “Bar Talk” series, attorney Leah Baldacci chimed in to share her “concerns” about anti-racism efforts in the state. “I would like to note that many of the attorneys in Maine… despite having white skin have had their struggles in order to achieve all of the academic achievements they have made and become attorneys and I am certainly one of them,” Baldacci said on the video chat with the Acting Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court.

Baldacci is the daughter-in-law of the former governor of Maine. It is, truly, a hard knock life.

As the legal community begins… an introspective process about racism, I would like to caution attorneys… [that] telling attorneys that are of the white race that they have ‘White Privilege’ is antithetical to the goals of searching for a way to make race a non-issue in our community…

I was very surprised during some of the discrimination training that I’ve received through the State of Maine that ‘White Privilege’ was a topic that was raised many times. and felt as though there was no other purpose but to shame the individuals who were white in the room…”.

Whenever you hear language like “the white race” you know you’re buckling in for a wild ride.

Oh, and if you’re skeptical that her critics are playing “Gotcha” games and cutting her remarks out of context, that was a passage that she put on her own LinkedIn page so she, mind-bogglingly, thinks this makes her look sympathetic.

Let’s break down where she careens off the rails here. First of all, when she describes the goal of making race “a non-issue” she’s beginning from a flawed premise that dooms all of her conclusions. The vision of universal color-blindness misses the point of struggles against racism just as surely as universal androgyny would miss the point of sexism. The problem in both cases isn’t that there aren’t differences but that those differences shouldn’t be the basis of discrimination. To that end, understanding the ways in which white people have advantages is pretty important to understanding how discrimination works.

Second, she interprets “white privilege” as meaning that every white person lives an easy life, a conclusion that requires a wicked persecution complex. White privilege means I don’t assume every interaction with a cop will kill me, not that I wasn’t born in a trailer park. It also, to make this relevant to the legal profession, means I can do my job without people dismissing me as an affirmative action hire or something. White people can face all sorts of struggles… but they don’t face any of these struggles that uniquely impact people of color and that’s why they’re indicative of systematic discrimination.

This is all the more tragic because Baldacci’s remarks suggest that she does grasp the existence of sexism in the legal profession. Unfortunately this sort of uncritical self-absorption at the heart of Karenism isn’t uncommon. It’s as if being victims of a form of discrimination they basically shut down and refuse to accept the possibility that they’re doling out discrimination themselves, consciously or unconsciously.

As people tried to convince Baldacci to step back from embarrassing herself publicly she went back to LinkedIn and… made things worse:

I have recently received messages, privately and publicly, insinuating or calling me “racist” because of my position on the phrase “White Privilege.”

When you accuse a group of people of “White privilege” you create no oxygen in the room for a discussion on haw we can help make the world a better place.

The phrase “White Privilege” is also, by definition, a racist comment – as it states that ALL white people are privileged and categorizes a whole race as guilty of bad faith.

She then posts a Jordan Peterson video in an unparalleled act of unintentional comedy before deleting and blocking her critics and threatening to raise ethical violations against those characterizing her rhetoric as racist.

The president of the bar association thanked her for her comments at the time, but later issued a statement apologizing for not appropriately dunking on her at the time:

“Recognizing bias isn’t racist against white people,” he said. “Saying Black lives matter isn’t saying that other lives don’t matter. I’m sorry that I didn’t address these issues on Monday. I understand my silence was a lost opportunity, and it appeared complicit. My response, or lack thereof, is not a reflection of my believes or the beliefs of the Maine State Bar Association.”

A partner at her firm, Lipman & Katz, resigned from the Board of Governors in protest over the president’s statement, but named partner Roger Katz took a different route:

“Although the associate has every right to exercise her First Amendment rights and express her opinions, I see things quite differently,” Katz wrote. “As a white man living in Maine, I see it as my duty to listen, learn and speak up on issues of racial justice. We have a national problem.”…

I am a lucky man. I was born in the greatest country in the world at one of the great times in history. Lucky. Two loving parents. Lucky. But I was also born white. Lucky there too,” he wrote. “Call it white privilege. Call it starting the Race of Life a little ahead of others because of the color of my skin. Whatever. But let’s recognize it. Let’s own it. And let’s change it.

Indeed. The video cued up to her comments at the 23 minute mark is here:

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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Last week, the Supreme Court narrowly agreed not to rescind the DACA program, thus permitting young undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States for at least the near future.

What it didn’t do was rule on the wisdom of DACA or say that the Trump administration cannot lawfully rescind it.

Some background — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was created in 2012 by President Barack Obama to side-step years of Congressional logjam on immigration reform. It happened through an executive memorandum ordering the Department of Homeland Security to defer the immigration prosecution of certain young people who entered the country without papers. To qualify, the young people had to have lived here since 2007, had to either be students or completed high school, or had to be honorably discharged from the military.

They also had to have committed no serious crimes, not posed a threat to national security or public safety, and be under the age of 31. In 2014, this program was expanded to include people of any age who entered the United States before the age of 16 and lived in the U.S. continuously since 2010. The 2014 changes also attempted to defer the prosecution of parents of U.S.-born children (called DAPA), but this initiative was stillborn when it drew immediate court challenge and was ruled illegal.

The interesting thing about DACA is that all litigants in the recent Supreme Court argument agree that it was unlawfully established. As Justice Clarence Thomas said in his dissent, it was a program created “unilaterally through a mere memorandum,” while it should have been either a legislative decision or drawn up through the normal rule-making process. “To state it plainly,” Thomas wrote, “the Trump administration rescinded DACA the same way that the Obama administration created it,” and according to him, there’s nothing illegal about that.

So why did five justices agree to let DACA survive, if even just for the moment? Their rationale, written by Chief Justice John Roberts (considered to be in the conservative camp), was that it wouldn’t be fair to renege on a promise made by the government, upon which so many relied.

Putting into immediate deportation the over 7,000 young immigrants who have “enrolled in degree programs, embarked on careers, started businesses, bought homes, gotten married and had children,” would be unjust, Roberts said.

He also cited the economic impact rescinding DACA would have. The cost of replacing workers would total $6.3 billion. There’d be a $25 billion loss in economic activity, a $60 billion loss in federal tax revenue over 10 years, and $1.25 billion loss in state and local tax revenue.

The DACA feud got started when the Trump administration wrote its own memorandum rescinding the Obama administration’s memorandum. The thought was, if Obama could create DACA with a mere memorandum, then Trump could rescind it with one.

The majority opinion, however, faulted this logic, saying that for any action to be in compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act (which governs decisions taken by the Department of Homeland Security), it must not be “arbitrary or capricious.” The fact that the Trump memo failed to consider the “reliance interests” of DACA recipients made the decision to rescind “arbitrary and capricious.”

While pro-DACA litigants included an equal protection argument stating that Trump’s overt hostility toward immigrants, who he’s called “criminals, drug dealer and rapists,” was an overt violation of equal protection law,  the majority didn’t find this claim substantiated because Trump’s prior statements were not “contemporary” with the memo. (Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only judge who would have upheld the equal protection claim.)

The decision is viewed by all sides as political. As President Donald Trump tweeted: “These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!”

The justices have given the Trump administration a roadmap for a second go at getting DACA rescinded. According to the decision, his administration just has to “assess the existence and strengths of any reliance interests and weigh them against competing police concerns” in order to pass muster.

But this might not be so easy. This weighing of interests should take time, at least if it’s to be done right.

Hopefully, the time it takes will be enough for U.S. voters to decide who they want in office when and if the DACA fight is revisited.

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Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.