Supreme Court Refuses to Revive Immigration Rule Texas Struck Down

The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to suspend the Texas judgment that ended a federal rule letting immigration judges set deportation cases aside indefinitely, leaving the state’s June win in place.

The order is one line long. The application “for stay presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied,” the Court’s docket reads. The justices gave no reasons, and no justice noted a dissent.

Baltimore, Columbus and New Haven, joined by Centro Legal de la Raza, an Oakland, California, legal-services nonprofit, had asked the Court on October 9 to suspend the judgment while they appeal. Justice Alito referred the request to the full Court, which turned it down five days after Texas and the U.S. Department of Justice filed their responses.

What stays in force

Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas entered a consent judgment on June 22, the day Texas sued. It vacated the 2024 rule from the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that runs the immigration courts, and barred the department from adopting a similar rule without an express basis in law. The department had already said it would not defend the rule.

Texas told the Court that the cities were asking it “to suspend a district court judgment to which they are not parties.” The trial court refused to let them into the case, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused to pause the judgment. A stay, the state argued, “would revive a rule that has been vacated since June 22.”

The Justice Department said the judgment “applies prospectively to prevent immigration judges from administratively closing new cases” and does not reopen cases already closed. Its brief, citing immigration court figures, says administratively closed cases rose from nearly 172,000 in January 2013 to more than 268,000 in January 2017.

The cities’ argument

In their final reply, filed October 23, the cities and Centro Legal argued that the judgment was “the product of egregious collusion to circumvent the Administrative Procedure Act,” because the department “announced in advance that it would not defend the Rule and then colluded with the plaintiff from the moment suit was filed.”

The cities’ appeal of the order keeping them out of the case remains pending at the Fifth Circuit. Until a court rules otherwise, immigration judges cannot use the 2024 rule to close new cases.