Supreme Court Limits Court Review of TPS Terminations, Clearing Way to End Protections for Haitians and Syrians

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that federal courts generally cannot hear most non-constitutional challenges to decisions ending Temporary Protected Status, clearing the way for the Trump administration to proceed with terminating TPS protections for Haitians and Syrians.

In a 6-3 decision in the consolidated cases Mullin v. Dahlia Doe and Trump v. Miot, Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court that the TPS law’s judicial-review bar, 8 U.S.C. §1254a(b)(5)(A), blocks courts from considering most claims brought under statutes such as the Administrative Procedure Act. “The TPS statute plainly bars consideration of respondents’ non-constitutional claims,” the majority said. Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

The ruling, issued June 25, reversed lower-court orders that had postponed the administration’s TPS terminations for Haiti and Syria while litigation continued. By lifting that relief, the court allowed the federal government to move forward with ending those designations.

The immediate consequences are especially large for Haiti. The Department of Homeland Security had published a notice terminating Haiti’s TPS designation with an effective date of 11:59 p.m. local time on Feb. 3, 2026, but that action had been delayed by the court fight. In that notice, DHS estimated that about 352,959 Haitian nationals, and stateless people who last habitually resided in Haiti, held TPS under the designation. DHS also issued a separate notice terminating Syria’s TPS designation, and the Supreme Court’s ruling likewise removed the lower-court barrier that had blocked that move.

Congress created Temporary Protected Status in 1990 to let people from designated countries remain in the United States temporarily when war, natural disaster or other extraordinary conditions make return unsafe. TPS protects recipients from removal and allows them to seek work authorization during the designation period. Haiti first received TPS after the 2010 earthquake, and Syria was designated in 2012 after civil war broke out, leaving both countries with longstanding TPS populations before the administration moved to end the protections.

The court also rejected, for purposes of interim relief, a constitutional argument raised in the Haiti case. The plaintiffs had argued that the termination violated equal protection, but the majority said that claim was unlikely to succeed on the current record and therefore did not justify keeping the lower-court order in place. The ruling does not make TPS terminations entirely unreviewable, but it sharply narrows the ability of TPS holders to use Administrative Procedure Act and similar non-constitutional claims to try to stop them.

The decision drew immediate political and legal reactions. In a June 26 press release, the White House called it “a major victory for American sovereignty” and said the administration had authority to terminate TPS for Haitian migrants. In dissent, Kagan wrote, “Miot, Doe, and the other plaintiffs before us deserve better than today’s decision.” Beyond Haiti and Syria, the ruling is likely to matter in future TPS fights because it reduces judicial oversight of termination decisions and leaves challengers with fewer legal avenues in court.