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The Supreme Court on Monday granted a writ of certiorari in Mullin v. National TPS Alliance and vacated a Ninth Circuit ruling setting aside the Secretary of Homeland Security’s vacatur and termination of Venezuela’s Temporary Protected Status designation and partial vacatur of Haiti’s TPS designation. The Court remanded the case for further consideration in light of Mullin v. Doe, in which the Court held in June that the TPS statute bars judicial review of non-constitutional claims and that respondents’ equal protection claim challenging Haiti’s TPS designation termination was unlikely to succeed. (Order List.)
Judge Amir H. Ali (D.D.C.) on Wednesday temporarily stayed a Department of Homeland Security policy to stop collecting biometric information—including fingerprints, photographs, and signatures—of detained people who have pending applications with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. (Memorandum Opinion and Order.) Detained noncitizens filed a class action lawsuit in April challenging the new biometric policy, which effectively blocked their immigration applications because USCIS requires biometric information as part of the application process for certain immigration statuses.
The Democratic National Committee sued President Trump, the White House, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that the administration’s use of taxpayer dollars to fund advertisements extolling the president violated the statutory ban on using appropriations for “publicity or propaganda purposes.” (Complaint.) (Fox News.) (Politico.) (Axios.) For background on the advertisements, see a discussion between Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer.
The Justice Department filed a status report on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to close a summary judgment hearing to the public in a class action lawsuit challenging federal government agencies’ detention of immigrants at Guantánamo. (Defendants’ Status Report.)
ProPublica cataloged detentions of 506 American citizens by immigration agents during the second Trump administration. (ProPublica.)
Joseph Nunn argued that “there is no emergency override” for a federal statutory prohibition on deploying troops to polling sites. (Just Security.)
Pending Interim Order Applications Involving the U.S. Government in the Supreme Court
Trump v. Kingdom: The government filed an application to the Supreme Court on September 28 seeking a stay of the district court’s August 26 order barring enforcement of the Bureau of Prisons’ 2026 policy ending hormone therapy, “sex-trait-modification surgery,” and social accommodations for inmates with gender dysphoria. The Chief Justice requested a response to the application by 4 p.m. on October 8.