The Supreme Court today issued two important rulings in immigration cases. Both are important victories for the Trump administration. Both rulings are 6-3, with the liberal justices in dissent. Both majority opinions are written by Justice Alito. (There is one small subpart of Alito’s opinion that has only a plurality.)
In this post, I’ll present Mullin v. Doe. In a separate post, I’ll present Mullin v. Al Otro Lado. (The petitioner Mullin in each case is of course Markwayne Mullin, Secretary of Homeland Security.)
Alito’s summary:
In these cases, we consider whether respondents, who challenge the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for aliens from Syria and Haiti, are entitled to orders postponing the terminations during litigation. We hold that they are not. The TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ non-constitutional claims. It allows “no judicial review of any determination . . . with respect to the . . . termination” of a TPS designation. 8 U. S. C. §1254a(b)(5)(A). The term “determination” can be used to describe either an individual decision or the whole process leading to a final decision, and under either understanding of the term, §1254a(b)(5)(A) squarely bars all of respondents’ non-constitutional claims.
The sole constitutional claim before us will likely fail. Citing statements made by President Trump and former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, one set of respondents advances an equal protection claim that Haiti’s TPS designation was terminated because of the racial makeup of that country’s population. But, ironically, one of respondents’ other arguments undermines the equal protection claim by offering a strong, race-neutral explanation for Haiti’s termination: namely, that the current administration, which has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal, simply opposes the TPS program, at least as it has been implemented in the past.
For these reasons, the District Courts erred in granting interim relief.
Justice Thomas, who joined Alito’s opinion, wrote separately to argue that the district court did not have jurisdiction over the equal-protection claim and that aliens have no equal-protection rights against the federal government.
Here is an excerpt from Justice Kagan’s dissent, in which she contends that the Court’s denial of preliminary relief to the plaintiffs is based on two mistakes about their likelihood of success:
First, the majority asserts that the Secretary’s compliance with the TPS statute is in every respect unreviewable by the courts. But in fact the statute allows judicial review of whether the Secretary adhered to the procedures it mandates—which is what the plaintiffs dispute here. Second, the majority claims to see no evidence that race played any role in the Haiti decision. But the evidence is there, plain to see, in the President’s statements, which the majority (and for that matter, his own lawyers) cannot even bear to repeat.