We must reverse an agency policy when we cannot discern a reason for it. That is the trouble in this case. The BIA's comparable-grounds rule is unmoored from the purposes and concerns of the immigration laws. It allows an irrelevant comparison between statutory provisions to govern a matter of the utmost importance—whether lawful resident aliens with longstanding ties to this country may stay here. And contrary to the Government's protestations, it is not supported by text or practice or cost considerations. The BIA's approach therefore cannot pass muster under ordinary principles of administrative law.

Also Monday, the court issued a per curiam opinion [text, PDF] in Hardy v. Cross [docket; cert. petition, PDF]. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) [Cornell LII backgrounder] "imposes a highly deferential standard for evaluating state-court rulings and demands that state-court decisions be given the benefit of the doubt." The court found that the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit departed from this standard when it reversed a district court's denial of Irving Cross' habeas corpus petition.