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Justices are scheduled to hear arguments on March 1 on whether Republican-led states can apply for the immigration measure, which was justified through the coronavirus pandemic.
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By Adam Liptak
WASHINGTON — Biden’s administration on Tuesday suggested the Supreme Court reject a challenge to end the pandemic-era immigration measure known as Title 42, saying the administration’s announcement that the fitness emergency would expire on May 11 would leave the case moot.
In December, the court blocked a lower court’s decision to lift the measure, allowing even migrants who might otherwise benefit from asylum to be temporarily deported at the southern border. The judges will hear arguments in the case in March. 1.
“The expected end of the public fitness emergency on May 11 and the expiration of the existing Title 42 order that would result would leave this matter moot,” the administration’s report said.
The deportation policy, introduced through the Trump administration in March 2020, has been used to deport migrants — adding many asylum seekers — some 2. 5 million times. Aid agencies have said the policy prevents migrants fleeing violence and persecution from obtaining a required port through the U. S. With U. S. and foreign law enforcement, however, border officials worry that their disappearance could simply fuel a backlog of illegal crossings along the already submerged border.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in December was a tentative victory for the 19 Republican-led states that had tried to keep Title 42 in place, saying states had to bear the brunt of the effects of higher border crossings. cause a crisis of unprecedented magnitude at the border,” state attorneys wrote in an emergency request, adding that “daily illegal crossings may more than double. “
In agreeing to hear the case, the Supreme Court stated that it would only address the question of whether States that had requested the suspension can continue their challenge to the measure.
The administration’s brief said that “mockery of the underlying case would also prevent the petitioners’ attempt to intervene. “
The court was sharply divided over whether or not to grant a stay. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson disagreed.
Judge Gorsuch, in a dissenting opinion joined by Judge Jackson, wrote that the court had taken a position, at least temporarily, on the most important factor in the case: whether the coronavirus pandemic justified immigration policy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention originally followed the policy to prevent cross-border transmission of the disease, a policy the firm says is no longer medically necessary.
“The existing border crisis is not a Covid crisis,” Judge Gorsuch wrote. “And courts are not tasked with perpetuating administrative decrees designed for an emergency just because elected officials have not responded to some other emergency. We are a court of law, not political decision-makers of last resort. “
U. S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington said the move did little to improve public health and much to endanger immigrants.
He set a deadline of December 21 to finish the program. A three-judge panel of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously rejected the states’ request for a stay of execution, saying they had waited too long to verify to meddle in the case, which brought with it migrant families seeking to end deportations under the suitability measure.
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