The Supreme Court immigration rule at issue will remain blocked after the justices on Tuesday declined to reinstate a Biden-era regulation that allowed immigration judges to pause certain deportation cases. In a brief, unsigned order with no noted dissents, the court rejected an emergency bid by three cities and an immigrant legal services group to halt a consent judgment between Texas and the U.S. Department of Justice that vacated the rule.
The regulation, adopted in 2024 by the Executive Office for Immigration Review within the Department of Justice, authorized what is known as administrative closure. Under that process, immigration judges could suspend some removal proceedings, for example, to give a crime victim or witness time to pursue relief such as asylum from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a separate agency.
In June, Texas sued in federal court in Wichita Falls, where the case was assigned to Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor. Texas argued that EOIR lacked authority to adopt administrative closure and that federal law requires an immigration judge to decide at the end of a proceeding whether a noncitizen is removable.
Within hours of the filing, Texas and the DOJ jointly asked O’Connor to enter final judgment for the state, to vacate the rule, and to bar EOIR from issuing a similar rule in the future. O’Connor granted the requests the same day.
On Aug. 7, Baltimore, Maryland, New Haven, Connecticut, Columbus, Ohio, and Centro Legal de la Raza sought to intervene on an emergency basis so they could defend the rule on appeal, as neither Texas nor the federal government intended to do so. O’Connor denied intervention for lack of standing, rejecting the cities’ contention that scrapping the policy would impose costs because taxpayers could be deported.
The challengers then asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to block the consent judgment and restore the rule while their appeal moved forward. The 5th Circuit denied that request.
On Oct. 9, the challengers petitioned the Supreme Court, calling the agreement between Texas and the DOJ the product of “egregious collusion” and warning of broader consequences if it stood. Their attorney, Joshua Salzman of Democracy Forward, argued that allowing the judgment to remain could enable agencies to evade administrative law by declining to defend disfavored regulations and consenting to nationwide relief.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the justices to leave the agreement in place, describing the bid to pause O’Connor’s ruling as an improper attempt to convert a clear dispute over intervention into a sweeping attack on the merits of the consent judgment.
Texas told the court that freezing O’Connor’s ruling would revive a rule the district court found unlawful, renew the fiscal and sovereign injuries the state alleged, and unsettle a final judgment accepted by the parties.
Four days after briefing concluded, the Supreme Court denied the request without comment.
What the Supreme Court immigration rule decision leaves in place
The denial keeps in effect O’Connor’s judgment vacating EOIR’s administrative closure regulation and barring the agency from issuing a similar rule, pending further proceedings in the lower courts.
The dispute over the Supreme Court’s role in policing such arrangements echoes broader concerns about constitutional structure, including debates over how the separation of powers shifted over two decades and the limits of executive branch discretion.
The case also highlights the influence of state-led challenges to federal immigration policies and the willingness of federal courts to accept negotiated resolutions. Observers are watching to see whether other states and agencies pursue similar consent judgments in future regulatory disputes before the Department of Justice and federal courts.