The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to lift the latest lower court block on ending temporary protected status for people from various countries, also asking the justices to consider formally taking up the case to stop lower court judges from blocking a policy they have already allowed the Trump administration to pursue.
Although the Supreme Court is already sitting on an emergency application from the DOJ asking it to lift a block on ending TPS for Syria, Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed another application on Wednesday to the high court’s emergency docket seeking to lift a block on ending TPS for Haiti. Sauer explained in his petition to the justices that the high court should again allow the administration to end TPS for Haiti, as it did twice in 2025 for Venezuela, arguing that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision is not reviewable despite lower courts’ efforts to the contrary.
“For all of the reasons stated in prior applications and then some, this Court should grant a stay yet again,” Sauer wrote. “As to the merits, respondents’ [Administrative Procedure Act] claims are clearly not reviewable and are in all events meritless, and respondents’ precedent-defying equal-protection challenge would apparently invalidate every action the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken since January 2025.”
“As to the equities, lower courts are again attempting to block major executive-branch policy initiatives in ways that inflict specific harms to the national interest and foreign relations, while crediting harms to respondents that inhere in the temporary nature of TPS,” he added.
Sauer also claimed the district court’s ruling, which claimed the revocation of TPS was unlawful because of clear “racial animus,” was an endorsement of a “far-fetched and far-reaching equal-protection claim” that has no merit and “threatens to invalidate virtually every immigration policy of the current administration.”
The solicitor general urged the high court to take up the case to its merits docket, alongside the pending petition to lift the block on ending TPS for Syria, as lower courts continue to issue conflicting rules on the Trump administration’s bids to end TPS.
“Unless the Court resolves the merits of these challenges—issues that have now been ventilated in courts nationwide—this unsustainable cycle will repeat again and again, spawning more competing rulings and competing views of what to make of this Court’s interim orders,” Sauer said.
“This Court should break that cycle by granting stays as well as certiorari before judgment in both Noem v. Doe, No. 25A952, and in this case,” he added.
The Supreme Court’s previous two orders lifting blocks of the Trump administration’s efforts to revoke TPS for Venezuela last year offered no reasoning in their majority opinions, leaving the door open for lower courts to continue blocking the termination of TPS for other countries without technically running afoul of any specific guidance from the high court. The DOJ’s petition regarding its efforts to end TPS for Haiti marks the fourth time it has had to go to the Supreme Court’s emergency docket regarding TPS terminations.
SOMALIS SUE OVER TPS REVOCATION AS TRUMP SEEKS SUPREME COURT HELP
In lower courts, the Trump administration has generally suffered lower court losses in TPS cases for two reasons: judicial overreach by district court judges and, in some instances, the administration’s failure to follow proper procedure.
The Supreme Court taking up either of the cases to its full merits docket could end the legal war, and would mark the latest instance of the justices taking on one of the Trump administration’s heated battles with the lower courts. The justices have already ruled on Trump’s tariffs and universal injunctions, and are slated to issue rulings on his ability to fire officials within the executive branch and on birthright citizenship in the coming months.
