Background
Congress created Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 1990 to provide short-term humanitarian protection for foreign nationals who cannot safely return home due to armed conflict, natural disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. Despite the program’s intended temporary nature, many designations have persisted for decades. Syria received a TPS designation in 2012 in response to the brutal Assad regime’s civil war; Haiti received one in 2010 following a catastrophic earthquake. Both designations were repeatedly extended over the years.
Shortly after the start of President Trump’s second term, the administration announced a policy of terminating every TPS designation coming up for renewal — ultimately thirteen in total — pursuant to an executive order directing that designations be limited strictly to what the statute’s text requires. In September 2025, the Secretary of Homeland Security terminated Syria’s TPS designation; in November 2025, she terminated Haiti’s. Syrian nationals sued in the Southern District of New York under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), obtaining interim relief that postponed the termination. Haitian nationals sued in the District Court for the District of Columbia under the APA and the Equal Protection Clause, also obtaining interim relief. Both the Second Circuit and D.C. Circuit declined to stay those orders pending appeal.
The Supreme Court granted certiorari before judgment in both cases, consolidated them, and deferred ruling on stay applications while the cases were briefed and argued. The central questions were whether the TPS statute’s judicial-review bar foreclosed the APA claims, and whether the Haitian plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their equal protection theory that Haiti’s designation was terminated due to the racial composition of its population.
The Court’s Holding
In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Alito, the Court held that the TPS statute’s judicial-review bar — which provides that “[t]here is no judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary of Homeland Security] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state” (8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(5)(A)) — forecloses all non-constitutional challenges to TPS terminations. The Court reasoned that “determination” carries a broad ordinary meaning (encompassing either a single decision or the entire process leading to one), and that the phrase “with respect to” further broadens the bar to cover not just the final termination decision but all subsidiary decisions and procedural steps leading up to it. Under established administrative-law principles, subsidiary decisions merge into final agency action; if that final action is unreviewable, challengers cannot avoid the bar by attacking the steps that preceded it.
On the equal protection claim brought by Haitian plaintiffs (the Miot respondents), the Court assumed for purposes of analysis that heightened scrutiny applied and that the applicable standard required showing that a racially discriminatory purpose was a motivating factor under Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U.S. 252 (1977). Even under that standard, the Court held the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed. Statements by President Trump and former Secretary Noem cited as evidence of racial animus were not overtly racial and expressed views consistent with race-neutral policy opposition to the TPS program. Moreover, the administration’s termination of every TPS designation across the board — covering countries of varied demographics — supplied a compelling race-neutral explanation that the plaintiffs themselves had argued in a different context.
The Court reversed the judgments of both district courts and remanded. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh joined the full opinion; Justices Gorsuch and Barrett joined all but Part III-A (the equal protection analysis). Justice Thomas filed a concurrence. Justice Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson.
Key Takeaways
- The TPS statute’s judicial-review bar (8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(5)(A)) is sweeping: it forecloses APA challenges to TPS terminations — both substantive and procedural — as well as challenges to any subsidiary step in the termination process.
- Courts cannot allow challengers to circumvent a statutory bar on reviewing final agency action by reframing their claims as attacks on procedural steps or intermediate determinations leading to that action.
- An equal protection claim that a TPS termination was racially motivated faces a high bar when the government can point to a facially race-neutral, across-the-board policy (here, terminating every TPS designation regardless of country) as a motivating explanation.
- The decision resolves a persistent circuit split, as lower courts had repeatedly rejected the government’s jurisdictional argument despite earlier Supreme Court stays in related Venezuela TPS litigation.
Why It Matters
This decision effectively closes the courthouse door on the primary legal strategy that hundreds of thousands of TPS holders from Haiti, Syria, and numerous other countries had used to delay removal since the current administration began terminating designations in early 2025. By reading the statutory review bar broadly — and rejecting workarounds based on procedural-error theories or narrow constructions of “determination” — the Court leaves TPS holders with no APA recourse and limits relief to constitutional claims that face a demanding threshold showing.
The ruling has immediate practical significance for an estimated several hundred thousand people currently holding TPS from the thirteen countries whose designations have been terminated. It also signals that Congress’s decision to grant the Executive nearly unreviewable discretion over humanitarian immigration programs will be enforced as written, reinforcing the political branches’ primacy over foreign-affairs-adjacent immigration decisions and limiting the role federal courts can play in checking executive action in this domain.