The Supreme Court has ruled that federal judges have no authority to second-guess how the executive branch manages Temporary Protected Status, clearing the way for the Trump administration to end humanitarian protections that have shielded hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Syrians for more than a decade. In Mullin v. Doe, consolidated with Trump v. Miot, No. 25-1083 & 25-1084, 609 U.S. ___ (2026), a 6-3 majority held that a federal statute categorically forecloses judicial review of a TPS termination decision, reversing the interim relief orders that two district courts had issued to block it. This was a full merits ruling on the reviewability question, decided on cert granted before judgment, not merely an emergency-docket stay.
A Case That Outlived Its Own Defendant
TPS for Haiti dates to January 2010, designated after that year’s earthquake; Syria was designated in 2012 amid its civil war, both under President Obama. Then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced Haiti’s termination in June 2025 and Syria’s in September 2025, citing among other reasons the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 as evidence Syria was no longer unsafe. The Syria challenge proceeded before Judge Katherine Polk Failla in the Southern District of New York; the Haiti challenge before Judge Ana C. Reyes in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Both district courts granted interim relief, and both were on appeal — to the Second Circuit and the D.C. Circuit, respectively — when the Supreme Court granted certiorari before judgment on March 16, 2026, consolidating the cases, hearing argument April 29 and deciding on June 25, 2026.
The caption itself tells part of the story. Noem was fired as DHS Secretary in March 2026, and former Senator Markwayne Mullin was installed as her successor effective March 31, 2026. Because this is an official-capacity suit, Mullin was automatically substituted as petitioner — which is why the case is styled Mullin v. Doe rather than Noem v. Doe.
Congress Already Closed the Courthouse Door
Congress created TPS in the Immigration Act of 1990 to provide short-term humanitarian relief — work authorization and protection from removal — to nationals who cannot safely return home because of armed conflict, natural disaster, or comparable crises. But the same statute, 8 U.S.C. §1254a(b)(5)(A), states that there 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.”
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, called that bar “clear” and “very broad,” foreclosing both substantive and procedural challenges to a termination decision. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett joined, though Gorsuch and Barrett did not join the portion of the opinion addressing whether the Court could reach the merits of the Haiti equal-protection claim without first resolving the district court’s jurisdiction over it. Justice Thomas filed a separate concurrence arguing the equal-protection claim discussed below was independently outside the district court’s jurisdiction, and that aliens hold no equal protection rights against the federal government at all.
This is a point worth sitting with regardless of one’s politics on immigration. When Congress writes text that plainly withdraws a category of decisions from judicial review, courts have no license to invent an exception because they dislike the policy on the other end of it. That is precisely the discipline the judiciary too rarely applies to the command that the right of the people to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.”
An Equal Protection Claim That Refuted Itself
Haitian TPS holders separately argued the termination violated equal protection, pointing to statements by President Trump and Secretary Noem about Haiti’s population. Justice Alito’s opinion made short work of it:
“One set of respondents advances an equal protection claim that Haiti’s TPS designation was terminated because of the racial makeup of the country’s population. But, ironically, one of respondents’ other arguments undermines the equal protection claim by offering a strong, race-neutral explanation for Haiti’s termination: namely, that the current administration, which has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal, simply opposes the TPS program, at least as it has been implemented in the past. For these reasons, the district courts erred in granting interim relief.”
A litigant cannot argue in one breath that a decision was racially motivated and in the next that the same decision reflects a blanket, program-wide policy applied to every country regardless of race. Those two theories cancel each other out, and the Court held the equal-protection claim unlikely to succeed.
Justice Kagan’s Dissent
Justice Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, writing that the challenged statements by the President and Secretary Noem “fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country.” It is a serious charge, and one three justices were prepared to make in print. But it is not evidence sufficient to override a statute that hands this determination to the executive alone, and six members of the Court concluded the government’s stated, race-neutral rationale defeated it.
The practical effect is significant: DHS can now proceed with ending protections for roughly 350,000 Haitian and 6,000 Syrian nationals, part of a broader TPS population of roughly 1.3 million people across seventeen countries. Congress wrote a program for genuine emergencies with an expiration built in. The Court has confirmed that deciding when an emergency has passed belongs to the President, not to a district judge who disagrees with the outcome.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.