Supreme Court Denies Trump’s Emergency Stay Request On Immigration Judges
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a setback Friday to President Donald J. Trump’s effort to rein in an entrenched immigration bureaucracy, declining to grant emergency relief in a case that strikes at the heart of executive authority over immigration judges.
At issue is whether immigration judges—employees of the Department of Justice who operate under the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) and ultimately answer to the attorney general—can be treated as quasi-independent political actors rather than executive branch officials subject to presidential supervision.
The lawsuit was filed by the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), which is challenging an EOIR policy that bars immigration judges from publicly commenting on immigration policy or the agency itself, even in their personal capacities. The group claims the restriction violates their First Amendment rights.
EOIR oversees the nation’s immigration courts and employs roughly 750 immigration judges nationwide.
The Trump administration has argued that the dispute is a textbook employment matter governed by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA), which requires federal employees to pursue workplace-related claims through the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), not federal district courts. Congress enacted the CSRA specifically to prevent end-runs around the administrative process and to preserve executive oversight of federal personnel.
But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit questioned the system’s “continued vitality” after President Trump dismissed both the Special Counsel and an MSPB member, leaving the board without a quorum and temporarily unable to function. That reasoning allowed the case to proceed outside the administrative framework Congress designed.
The underlying lawsuit seeks to further insulate immigration judges from presidential control—effectively transforming them into unaccountable bureaucrats with the power to shape national immigration policy without democratic oversight.
By refusing to issue a stay, the Supreme Court has allowed that theory to advance through the lower courts. The Trump administration warned that keeping the ruling in place, even temporarily, would cause irreparable harm to the president’s constitutional authority to supervise executive officers and faithfully execute federal immigration law.
Immigration judges are not Article III judges. They do not have lifetime tenure. They are Justice Department employees. Yet under Biden-era precedents and aggressive litigation, they are increasingly treated as if they exist outside the executive chain of command altogether.
As SCOTUS Blog explained Friday, “A federal appeals court had sent the challenge by a group representing the judges back to a federal trial court for more fact-finding on the independence of the administrative scheme set up to deal with claims by federal employees, and – in a brief unsigned order – the justices left that ruling in place.”
The blog added, “However, the court also left open the possibility that the government could return to the Supreme Court to seek relief ‘if the District Court commences discovery proceedings’ before the justices rule on the government’s petition for review of the lower court’s decision.”
Legal analyst and law professor Stephen Vladeck described the order on social media as the Trump administration’s “first real loss” at the Supreme Court since April.
The dispute traces back to a policy the NAIJ claims prevents judges from speaking about immigration issues or the agency that employs them in their personal capacities. The group initially filed suit in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, arguing the policy infringed on free speech rights.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, a Clinton appointee, dismissed the case, ruling that the CSRA required the judges to pursue their claims through the administrative process instead of federal court.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the Supreme Court on Dec. 5 to block the Fourth Circuit’s decision, warning that “‘unelected judges’ do not get ‘to update the intent of unchanged statutes if the court believes recent political events … alter the operation of a statute the way Congress intended.”
Sauer further cautioned that the ruling had already created “destabilizing uncertainty” that could spread beyond immigration courts to other administrative-review schemes that bar district-court jurisdiction, including those governing agencies like the Federal Trade Commission.
For the Trump administration, the case represents a broader fight over whether unelected officials can shield themselves from accountability—or whether the Constitution still means what it says about executive power.