Supreme Court blocks review as TPS terminations loom

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration and barred most court challenges to Temporary Protected Status decisions—clearing the way to terminate TPS protections for more than 350,000 Haitians and Syrians and potentially opening t

On the day the Supreme Court handed down its decision, the stakes landed in the simplest way possible: whether tens of thousands of families can keep the legal footing they have built in the United States—while officials decide whether their countries are safe enough to return to.

The ruling effectively clears the Trump administration to move forward with terminating Temporary Protected Status for more than 350. 000 nationals of Syria and Haiti who are living and working in the United States. In the background is a broader threat—one that could reach far beyond these two countries. The American Civil Liberties Union has called the administration’s effort the “largest de-documentation event in US history. ” warning it could strip away legal status from more than 1.3 million TPS holders across 17 designated countries.

The justices reached the outcome through a narrow-sounding legal doorway that has major human consequences: whether the executive branch’s TPS determinations can be reviewed by courts.

In a 6-3 decision. the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority agreed with the federal government that the executive branch’s decisions about TPS are not subject to judicial review in the way the lawsuits sought. The Trump administration argued that when Congress created the TPS program in a 1990 statute. it gave the Secretary of Homeland Security full discretion to designate a country for protection and to extend or terminate that designation.

The Court adopted a broad reading of the judicial bar built into the statute. The law says: “[t]here is no judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary of Homeland Security] with respect to the designation. or termination or extension of a designation. of a foreign state.” Writing for the majority. Justice Samuel Alito explained that “determination” covers not only the secretary’s final decision. but also the process leading up to it.

That distinction—between what gets decided and how the decision gets made—drove much of the litigation. The plaintiffs had argued that while a final termination might be insulated. the procedural steps required by law should still be open to challenge. But the Court held that federal law bars courts from reviewing “non-constitutional” claims related to the humanitarian program.

The majority also addressed the Haitian plaintiffs’ race-based challenge under the Equal Protection Clause. Those arguments claimed that the administration discriminated against Haitians based on race. Justice Alito wrote that “None of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial. ” adding that the comments amounted. in substance. to policy views that could be grounded in race-neutral justifications.

The case itself grew out of two lawsuits that were consolidated: Trump v. Miot and Mullin v. Doe. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the matter in March after the Trump administration asked for a stay of lower court decisions that had postponed TPS terminations.

Unlike other similar TPS cases, the justices preserved the status quo. Protections against deportation for Haitians and Syrians remained in place while the Court reviewed the government’s arguments.

Under the TPS statute, the DHS secretary may designate a country for TPS for up to 18 months. Before deciding whether to terminate, extend, or re-designate, the secretary must conduct a review assessing whether country conditions still merit the designation.

Haiti was first designated for TPS in 2010 after a devastating hurricane, and its designation has been repeatedly extended.

Legal filings in the lead-up to Thursday’s decision emphasized how the plaintiffs believed politics—not statutory requirements—had driven the government’s move. On June 16. lawyers representing Haitian immigrants asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the case and let the lower courts resolve it in light of new evidence supporting their claims about the termination of TPS for Haiti.

They argued that then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s termination was a “preordained outcome” and that she moved to end the protection even without receiving a recommendation from the State Department.

During Noem’s tenure, she also tried to end TPS for as many as 13 nations, including Venezuela, Yemen, and Afghanistan. District courts found that Noem violated requirements of the statute when terminating TPS—or. in Venezuela’s case. vacating an existing extension—by failing to properly consult with other relevant federal agencies on country conditions.

In the Syria case. US District Court Judge Katherine Polk Failla of New York wrote that Noem “took ‘a hatchet to the TPS system.’” Failla found the termination of TPS for Syria arbitrary and capricious. writing that the decisions were “grounded not in law and not in fact. but that are in political considerations simply not relevant under the TPS statute.”.

In the Haiti litigation. a US District Court judge in Washington. D.C. reached a different kind of conclusion about motive. Earlier this year, District of Columbia federal Judge Ana C. Reyes concluded that evidence suggested Noem’s decision to end protection for Haitians was motivated. at least partially. by racial animus. tied to President Donald Trump’s disparaging comments about Haitian migrants.

Reyes also found that while Congress gave the secretary broad discretion to make TPS determinations, the program’s goal was to standardize temporary protections and insulate them from political whims.

Last year, the Supreme Court twice dismissed district court rulings blocking Noem’s actions against TPS for Venezuela, allowing the Trump administration to revoke protected status from hundreds of thousands of people pending appeal.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented in October over the Court’s willingness to grant the government’s stay in the Venezuela case. “I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous, and harmful interference with cases pending in lower courts while lives hang in the balance,” she wrote.

In a separate dissent. Jackson described the decision as “yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. ” arguing that the Court should have stayed its hand. “Having opted instead to join the fray. the Court plainly misjudges the irreparable harm and balance-of-the-equities factors. ” she wrote. “by privileging the bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families’ pleas for the stability our Government has promised them.”.

That tension—between executive discretion and judicial oversight—also showed up during the April oral arguments for Trump v. Miot and Mullin v. Doe.

Liberal justices pressed the government’s theory that the secretary’s TPS decision-making process isn’t reviewable. Justice Jackson questioned the logic of Congress writing requirements into the statute if courts had no role in enforcing them. Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that Congress could have been explicit about terminations being unreviewable, but it wasn’t.

The record in the lower courts had also focused on procedural compliance. The lower courts found Noem failed to adequately consult with the State Department about country conditions, violating procedural requirements.

In one exchange, Justice Jackson offered a hypothetical asking whether the secretary could use a “Ouija board” to decide. Her point was blunt: random, unreasoned decision-making would still be prohibited if the law meant what it said.

Sotomayor, for her part, raised the plaintiffs’ concern that discriminatory purpose may have played a part in the Haiti decision. She referenced the difficulty of seeing how Trump calling Haiti and other countries “shithole” places and accusing migrants with TPS of “poisoning the blood” of the United States wouldn’t matter to the question of motive.

Conservative justices appeared more receptive to the government’s position that TPS “determinations” sit beyond federal court review.

The plaintiffs countered that the DHS secretary’s final decision might be immune, but procedural steps should not be. Justice Elena Kagan, dissenting in Thursday’s ruling, focused on the consequences of the Court’s interpretation. After the ruling. “a Secretary can announce to the world that she didn’t consult with anyone—more. that she didn’t evaluate country conditions at all—before making. extending. or terminating a TPS designation.”.

“The power to mass expel people who have done nothing wrong to countries that remain unsafe,” Kagan wrote, was at stake.

Ahilan Arulanantham. the attorney representing the Syrian plaintiffs. described the legal question in practical terms: whether a refugee protection statute can be set aside when officials try to take away immigration status. “And our view is it is unlikely that a refugee protection statute would have given that power to the Secretary. ” he said.

He added that the Court’s decision appears to answer the question in favor of the government. “The question before the Court. ” Arulanantham said after April oral arguments. “was whether the government could ‘ignore the law when it tries to take away someone’s immigration status.’ Judging by the justices’ ruling on this case. the answer appears to be yes.”.

Thursday’s decision doesn’t just settle an argument about language in a statute. It changes what families and advocates can realistically ask courts to do when TPS protections are withdrawn—while the Trump administration moves toward terminations for Haitians and Syrians. and the possibility looms that the scope of revocations could expand across many more countries.

Supreme Court Temporary Protected Status TPS Haiti Syria Trump administration Homeland Security Kristi Noem judicial review Equal Protection Clause ACLU deportation