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| Top US court blocks Obama migrant plan | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| The Supreme Court has announced it is split on President Barack Obama’s plan to shield millions of undocumented immigrants living illegally in the US. | |
| The divide comes as a blow to President Obama's 2014 executive action, in which he bypassed Congress in order to protect immigrants from deportation. | The divide comes as a blow to President Obama's 2014 executive action, in which he bypassed Congress in order to protect immigrants from deportation. |
| The court's one-sentence opinion effectively blocks the plan from taking effect during Mr Obama's presidency. | The court's one-sentence opinion effectively blocks the plan from taking effect during Mr Obama's presidency. |
| Texas led 26 Republican-led states in challenging the programme. | Texas led 26 Republican-led states in challenging the programme. |
| The opinion, which produced a 4-4 split among the judges, leaves intact the judgment of a lower district court, which now will hear the case again. | |
| The deadlock was only possible because of the death of of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2015, leaving a vacancy that is still unfilled. | |
| This is the first tied decision produced by the court, as the Senate continues to block Mr Obama's nominee, Judge Merrick Garland. | |
| The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans initiatives had been on hold since 2015 as the court considered the programmes' legality. | |
| Analysis - Anthony Zurcher, BBC News, Washington | |
| The deadlocked decision in US v Texas is the clearest example to date of the impact that Justice Antonin Scalia's death has had on the US Supreme Court - and, consequently, on the direction of US public policy writ large. | |
| The court's inability to find a majority either supporting President Barack Obama's unilateral executive action on immigration or striking it down means the whole controversy heads back into the lap of a lower-level conservative judge in Texas. | |
| While those judicial gears slowly grind away, the US has a presidential election to conduct in just over four months. | |
| If the Senate continues to drag its feet on confirming Mr Obama's pick for the high court, Merrick Garland, the next president could not only set US immigration policy but also pick the justice who will likely be the deciding vote if and when those decisions once again reach the Supreme Court. | |
| Given that US voters are choosing between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the disposition of the immigration issue for generations to come is in the balance. As if the stakes in the US presidential election weren't high enough already. | |
| The lack of ruling leaves the legal status of about four million undocumented immigrants in limbo. | |
| President Obama's unilateral action would have allowed migrants to obtain work permits and would block them from deportation while their citizenship status was being determined by lawmakers. | |
| Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton called the courts deadlocked opinion "unacceptable" and said that immigrants "enrich our communities and contribute to our economy every day". | |
| "We should be doing everything possible under the law to provide them relief from the spectre of deportation," Mrs Clinton said in a statement. |