San Francisco – A federal court of appeals has rejected a request to reconsider its decision that the Trump administration’s abrupt cancellation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for individuals from Venezuela and Haiti was unlawful.

In January, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the government’s decision to end TPS for Venezuelans and Haitians was unlawful because it exceeded the authority Congress provided to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The panel wrote that then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s actions “fundamentally contradict Congress’s statutory design, and her assertion of a raw, unchecked power to vacate a country’s TPS is irreconcilable with the plain language of the statute.”

Yesterday’s court order to reject the request for a rehearing, referred to as en banc, means the federal government cannot re-argue its case before 11 different Ninth Circuit judges. The government must either seek certiorari at the U.S. Supreme Court, or the decision of the Ninth Circuit will be final.

Please attribute the following quotes on the court action to: 

“This victory brings hope to over 600,000 TPS recipients whose protection has been stripped, leaving them vulnerable to deportation. We urge Congress to act swiftly and pass legislation providing a permanent solution for TPS holders and their families, many of whom have lived in the US for decades, contributing to their communities and economy,” said Jose Palma, coordinator of the National TPS Alliance. “The time for lawmakers to listen and act is now before more TPS families get destroyed."

“The Trump administration is attempting to strip legal protections from more than one million people who rely on Temporary Protected Status because their home countries are in crisis,” said Emi MacLean, an attorney with the ACLU Foundation of Northern California. “Congress created TPS 30 years ago to ensure that humanitarian protections are granted according to law, not political whim. By trying to dismantle these protections, the administration is pushing us back toward an era of unchecked executive discretion. The Ninth Circuit rejected that approach, and the Supreme Court should do the same.”

Read NTPSA v. Noem timeline HERE

Read order HERE

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