Judge Lifts Block on Termination of Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopians

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy lifted his administrative stay, but said plaintiffs can still challenge the termination as ‘racist.’

Security guards walk by the entrance to the John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse, in Boston, on April 14, 2023. Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

A federal judge in Massachusetts has lifted his order blocking the Trump administration’s plan to end deportation protection for Ethiopians. However, he also ruled that a group of plaintiffs can try to block their deportation by alleging racial discrimination.

District Judge Brian Murphy, in an Aug. 18 order, said that in light of a recent Supreme Court decision, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has the power to terminate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for Ethiopians living in the United States.

That program allows foreign nationals living in America to apply for work permits and gives them a measure of protection against being deported for a temporary period when their home countries are deemed unsafe.

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that lower courts generally have no right to question when the DHS secretary terminates the program for a specific country. But that Supreme Court decision left open the possibility that plaintiffs could bring claims for violation of constitutional rights, and Murphy said that applies in this case.

Advocacy group African Communities Together, along with a group of individual plaintiffs, first sued in January to stop the Trump administration from terminating TPS for Ethiopia.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled in a similar case involving Haiti and Syria that courts had to abide by the language of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

That law states, “There is no judicial review of any determination of the Attorney General with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state under this subsection.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling applied the same principle to the head of DHS.

In spite of the ruling, Murphy in July issued an administrative stay blocking the government from immediately terminating the protected status for Ethiopia. That was to “allow the court time to consider the merits of a case that cannot be successfully or appropriately evaluated in haste,” he said.

In Monday’s ruling, Murphy dismissed most of the Ethiopian plaintiffs’ claims. The plaintiffs had not shown that the government violated their procedural due process rights, and the previous Supreme Court ruling already overrode their claim that the DHS secretary could not terminate the program, he ruled.

But he rejected the government’s position that the case should be dismissed because the plaintiffs had failed to show that racism was a motivating factor for the termination.

“The Court is unpersuaded,” Murphy wrote.

He ruled the plaintiffs’ case was at least strong enough to proceed to the “discovery” phase, where they could present evidence backing up their argument.

The Supreme Court had previously said, in its 6–3 ruling, that the racism claim was likely to fail for these cases, too.

“Ironically, respondents themselves offer a race-neutral explanation for the Government’s action: namely, that the current administration, which has terminated every TPS designation that has come up for renewal, simply opposes the TPS program as it has been implemented in the past,” the majority opinion of the Supreme Court said.