The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration over Venezuelans fighting for temporary protected status in the U.S., over dissent from the court’s three Democratic appointees.
Friday’s order follows an earlier one in May that sided with the administration over a dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Jackson on Friday called the latest move from the majority “yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket.”
After losing again in the lower courts, the administration turned back to the justices, arguing that the case involved “the increasingly familiar and untenable phenomenon of lower courts disregarding this Court’s orders on the emergency docket.”
Noting the previous May order, U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote, “Just four months ago, this Court (with only one Justice noting dissent) stayed the district court’s order granting preliminary relief that indefinitely postponed the Secretary of Homeland Security’s determinations regarding the temporary protected status (TPS) designation of Venezuela.” He argued that the latest lower court ruling against the administration “rests on the same flawed legal grounds as its predecessor — the one this Court stayed.”
Lawyers representing Venezuelan beneficiaries of protected status opposed emergency relief for the administration. They defended the lower court ruling against Secretary Kristi Noem’s attempt to terminate their protected status. They wrote that upending their protections would “cause massive injuries to Plaintiffs and their loved ones, including many American children.”
Democratic members of Congress filed an amicus brief to the justices, warning them of “the severe and substantial economic and social impacts that the unlawful revocation of TPS for hundreds of thousands of people would have on their districts and the communities they represent in Congress.”
Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
