The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a suit brought by a group of Republican attorneys general, who sought to keep in place the emergency Title 42 measure implemented by the Trump administration, which expired last week.
The high court’s Thursday ruling (pdf) ended Title 42, the emergency measure that the Trump administration implemented in March 2020 as a reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, and concluded a legal saga between Republican states and the Biden administration that lasted months before the measure expired on May 11.
Both the Trump and Biden administrations used Title 42 to expel illegal immigrants.
Legal Battle on Border Policy
The case goes back to January 2021, when a group of illegal immigrants seeking asylum in the United States filed a class-action lawsuit in the D.C. District Court against the Biden administration, arguing that the government did not have the authority to expel them under Title 42.
In November 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled (pdf) in favor of the illegal immigrants, declaring Title 42 illegal, as well as all memos issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “suspending the right to introduce certain persons into the United States.”
But Sullivan’s ruling clashed with a May 2022 ruling (pdf) by the District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, which sided with a group of Republican states—against the Biden administration—in issuing a nationwide injunction allowing Title 42 to stay.
Following Sullivan’s ruling, the states went to intervene in the Washington case and sought to defend Title 42 in the D.C. Court of Appeals. After the appeals court denied the states’ motion to intervene, the states then submitted an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.
The high court, in a 5–4 vote, granted (pdf) the states’ request in December 2022 and allowed Title 42 to remain in effect.
The high court’s Thursday ruling removed the case from the court’s calendar and instructed a lower court in Washington, D.C. to dismiss the case as moot.
By Gary Bai
