The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to revive a Biden-era rule allowing immigration judges to close deportation proceedings for people who are in the process of obtaining lawful status.
The one-line order comes almost two weeks after three cities and a California legal aid group petitioned the justices to restore the rule, arguing that the Justice Department and Texas colluded to eliminate it outside of the established rulemaking process.
At issue is a June judgment halting the rule nationwide. A federal judge in Texas entered it on the same day the state filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department. The Trump administration and Texas jointly asked the court to bar the immigration court system from ever enacting a similar policy.
In an application to the justices, Baltimore; Columbus, Ohio; New Haven, Connecticut; and Centro Legal de la Raza argued that the judgment erased certain important procedures, “over the course of a single day, without meaningful judicial review, public participation” or rulemaking requirements.
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The blocked rule had given immigration judges discretion to spare victims of crimes or neglected children from facing deportation proceedings while undergoing a process to gain immigration relief from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the application says.
The Supreme Court decided to let the judgment stand while the legal case plays out. The Justice Department and Texas argued in filings last week that the cities and Centro Legal de la Raza lacked the right to intervene.
“A stay would revive a rule the district court declared unlawful, renew the fiscal and sovereign injuries Texas alleged, and unsettle a final judgment accepted by the actual parties,” Texas’ court filing last week states. “It would also restore a binding regulation that the Federal Government would have to administer unless and until lawfully displaced, even though responsible officials concluded that the Rule cannot be defended in good faith.”
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