On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily agreed that President Trump can revoke the temporary protected status (TPS) of more than 300,000 Venezuelan nationals residing in America.
In its order, the high court granted a request from the administration to place a temporary stay on a lower court order that attempted to prevent the government from undertaking the aforementioned policy. The ruling appeared to be along ideological lines, with Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting from the granting of stay.
As noted by the majority, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California initially issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from revoking TPS status for the foreign nationals in question in March. That order was paused by SCOTUS while the government appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the motion.
The district court ultimately “entered final judgment” in the case last month, siding against the administration.
As described by SCOTUS, the district court deemed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s move to revoke TPS as “unlawful,” and set “aside the Secretary’s actions effectuating her decision — namely, her vacatur of a pending extension of TPS for Venezuelan nationals, and her termination of that status itself.” The lower court additionally “concluded that the Secretary unlawfully vacated a TPS extension for Haitian nationals,” however, the administration’s application for stay to the Supreme Court only “seeks to stay the portions of the District Court’s judgment pertaining to Venezuela, but not Haiti.”
In justifying its granting of stay, the Supreme Court majority noted that, “Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not,” and that the “same result that we reached in May is appropriate here.”
Writing a lone dissent, Jackson argued that the Trump administration has not demonstrated a “time-sensitive need” to justify the high court’s interim stay in the case. She furthermore criticized the majority for what she characterized as “eschew[ing] restraint — ignoring the need for exigency or any other prudent threshold limitation on the exercise of our discretion — and wordlessly override the considered judgments of our colleagues.”
“We once again use our equitable power (but not our opinion-writing capacity) to allow this Administration to disrupt as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible,” Jackson wrote. “Having opted instead to join the fray, the Court plainly misjudges the irreparable harm and balance-of-the-equities factors by privileging the bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families’ pleas for the stability our Government has promised them.”
The Supreme Court’s temporary pause “as to the Venezuela vacatur and Venezuela termination” will remain in effect “pending the disposition of the Government’s appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such writ is timely sought.” The stay will terminate if a potential petition from the administration to SCOTUS is denied by the high court or if SCOTUS agrees to consider the matter and issue a final judgment in the case.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood