White House Struggles on Immigration Ruling

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s lawyers, facing what could be months of delay on the White House’s immigration efforts, are struggling for a response to a Texas judge’s ruling that has imperiled one of the president’s potential legacy achievements.

A top administration official said Wednesday it was unclear whether the Department of Justice would seek an emergency order that would allow the president’s immigration programs to go into effect while an appeal proceeds. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said that no decision had been made on an emergency application to an appeals court, but she pledged to fight all challenges to the president’s actions.

Monday’s late-night 123-page ruling by Judge Andrew S. Hanen forced Mr. Obama to halt plans to protect millions of undocumented immigrants. White House supporters attacked the judge’s ruling as “shaky.” Conservative legal critics hailed it as a powerful argument.

Regardless of which side prevails, the Texas ruling did show how deft Mr. Obama’s adversaries had become in their efforts to delay — if not derail — a program that immigration advocates have been intensely clamoring for.

In the meantime, the clock on Mr. Obama’s presidency is ticking.

Mr. Earnest added that he hoped that the lawyers could “move as quickly as we can through the legal system so that that situation can be resolved.”

In recent decisions, the Supreme Court has generally sided with federal authority in state challenges to immigration policies. In 2012 it upheld one part of a tough 2010 Arizona immigration law even as it endorsed broad federal power over immigration. In 2011, it sustained a different law that imposed harsh penalties on businesses that hired illegal workers.

And in December, the court let stand a ruling requiring Arizona to issue driver’s licenses to young immigrants spared from deportation by Mr. Obama.

Julia Preston contributed reporting from New York.

A version of this article appears in print on February 19, 2015, on page A14 of the New York edition with the headline: White House Struggles On Immigration Ruling . Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe

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