New Details on the Supreme Court’s Decision to Deny the Trump Administration’s Emergency Request on Haitian and Syrian TPS

New details about the Supreme Court decision that keeps deportation protections for Haitian and Syrian TPS beneficiaries at least through the summer.
The court issued a brief, unsigned order consolidating the two cases, establishing a detailed briefing schedule, and setting oral arguments for the second week of the April 2026 argument session. A final ruling is expected before the end of the court’s current term, in late June or early July 2026.

The two cases arrived at the Supreme Court through separate emergency applications filed by U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security.

The first application, numbered 25A952, was submitted to Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her capacity as Circuit Justice for the Second Circuit. It concerned the Syria TPS case, in which U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla of the Southern District of New York had blocked the administration from ending TPS for Syrian nationals before the program’s scheduled termination date of November 21, 2025. The Second Circuit had declined in February 2026 to freeze Failla’s ruling pending appeal.

The second application, numbered 25A999, was submitted to Chief Justice John Roberts in his capacity as Circuit Justice for the District of Columbia Circuit. It concerned the Haiti TPS case, in which U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of the District of Columbia had issued an order on February 2, 2026, blocking the administration from terminating TPS for Haitian nationals. The D.C. Circuit declined on March 6, 2026, by a divided panel, to freeze that ruling pending appeal.

Following standard procedure, Sotomayor and Roberts referred the emergency applications to the full court, which considered both requests together.

The Supreme Court’s response was deliberate and consequential.

Rather than granting the administration’s request for an immediate stay — which would have allowed the TPS terminations to take effect immediately while the cases were litigated — the court deferred consideration of the emergency applications entirely. Instead, it treated both applications as petitions for certiorari before judgment, meaning it agreed to take the cases directly without waiting for the federal appeals courts to complete their review.

Those petitions, now docketed as cases 25-1083 and 25-1084, were granted. The two cases were consolidated into a single proceeding, and a total of 1 hour of oral argument time was allocated, divided between the parties.

The lower court orders blocking both TPS terminations remain in full effect until the Supreme Court rules.

The administration had argued strenuously that the court should intervene on an emergency basis, pointing to two earlier cases in which the Supreme Court had granted it emergency relief to end TPS for Venezuelan nationals. Solicitor General Sauer called the Haiti and Syria cases “the legal equivalent of fraternal, if not identical, twins” to the Venezuela disputes and warned that without Supreme Court intervention, litigation over TPS terminations would continue to produce conflicting rulings across the country. The court was unmoved by that argument, at least on the question of emergency relief.

The court’s order established the following schedule, which governs what each side must file and when:

March 30, 2026, is the deadline for the Trump administration — the petitioner in both cases — to file its merits brief setting out its full legal arguments before the court. Any outside organizations or advocacy groups wishing to file amicus curiae briefs in support of the administration or neither party must also submit their briefs by this date.

April 13, 2026, is the deadline for respondents — the Haitian and Syrian TPS holders who filed the original lawsuits — to file their merits briefs. Any outside organizations wishing to file amicus curiae briefs in support of the TPS holders must also submit by this deadline.

April 20, 2026, is the deadline for the administration to file a reply brief if it chooses to respond to arguments in the respondents’ briefs.

Oral arguments are scheduled for the second week of April 2026 before the full court. Attorneys for both the government and the TPS holders will have a total of one hour — divided between the two sides — to present their arguments directly to the nine justices and to respond to questions from the bench.

Late June or early July 2026 is when the court’s final ruling is expected, consistent with the end of the current Supreme Court term.

Haiti. Haiti was first designated for TPS in January 2010, days after a catastrophic earthquake killed more than 300,000 people and left the country in ruins. The designation was extended multiple times across successive administrations — most recently under President Biden in 2024, citing simultaneous economic, political, security, and health crises, including surging gang violence, a collapsed government, and the absence of a functioning state.

Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced on November 28, 2025, the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation, effective February 3, 2026. Noem maintained that the decision reflected a “necessary and strategic vote of confidence” in Haiti’s future and was consistent with the administration’s foreign policy vision. She acknowledged conditions she called “concerning” but concluded that parts of the country were “suitable” for return. The State Department simultaneously maintained — and continues to maintain — a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for Haiti, citing kidnapping, crime, terrorist activity, civil unrest, and limited healthcare.

Judge Reyes blocked the termination and found that Noem’s decision was likely motivated in part by racial animus. She cited both the secretary’s own public statements characterizing immigrants in derogatory terms and President Trump’s remarks about Haiti, including his promotion during the 2024 campaign of the false claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents’ pets — a claim local officials said had no factual basis. “Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants,” Reyes wrote. “Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the [Administrative Procedure Act] to apply the facts to the law faithfully in implementing the TPS program. The record to date shows she has yet to do that.”

Syria. Syria was designated for TPS by the Obama administration in 2012 in response to the Assad government’s violent crackdown on the civilian population following the Arab Spring protests. The designation was extended through multiple administrations, including during Trump’s first term.

Noem moved to end Syria’s TPS in September 2025, citing the collapse of the Assad regime at the end of 2024 and the subsequent lifting of U.S. sanctions. She argued that with the prior government gone, the extraordinary conditions that had justified the designation no longer existed. Judge Failla found otherwise, concluding that the administration’s decision was grounded not in a genuine assessment of country conditions but in a broader political objective to eliminate TPS wherever possible. The State Department’s current travel advisory for Syria warns against travel due to terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, hostage taking, and armed conflict.

Both cases ask the Supreme Court to resolve questions that have produced conflicting rulings across federal courts nationwide. The central issue is whether federal courts have any authority to review TPS termination decisions. The TPS statute provides that there is “no judicial review” of the Secretary of Homeland Security’s determinations regarding TPS designations. The Trump administration has argued that this provision strips courts of jurisdiction over any challenge, regardless of the legal theory.

Every federal court that has considered the question — including the Ninth Circuit, the Second Circuit, the D.C. Circuit, and multiple district courts — has rejected that argument, holding that courts retain the power to review whether the Secretary acted within the boundaries of the statute, even if they cannot second-guess her assessment of country conditions.

The Supreme Court’s decision will have a major impact on the federal government’s power over TPS and the extent to which courts can review those decisions. The outcome will set a precedent not just for the TPS status of Haitians and Syrians but also for other TPS-holding groups and future administrations, potentially affecting more than 1.3 million people and shaping the national immigration landscape.