- Supreme Court dismisses attempts of Republican-led states to maintain Title 42
- Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar's brief that was filed in February told the court that the case is moot
- The Supreme Court canceled arguments after the brief in apparent support of Prelogar's stance
On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court dismissed an attempt by GOP-led states to keep the Title 42 immigration policy in effect.
The brief order of the highest court was only one sentence long and included instructions to an appeals court to dismiss the state's motion to intervene in the case as moot. The decision was almost guaranteed to have been spurred by the end of the health emergency that Republicans used to justify the policy.
Supreme Court Dismisses Attempts To Maintain Title 42
Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar filed a brief in February where she told the court that "absent other relevant developments, the end of the public health emergency will (among other consequences) terminate the Title 42 orders and moot this case."
The Supreme Court then canceled arguments in the case a week following Prelogar's brief, which was a sign that it was inclined to agree with the Solicitor General's stance on the matter. As per the New York Times, the Trump-era policy allowed officials to turn away immigrants who might have otherwise qualified for asylum in the United States.
On Thursday, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, saying that she would have gotten to largely the same place in another way if she had dismissed the case as "improvidently granted."
On the other hand, Justice Neil M, Gorsuch, used the situation to issue eight pages of reflections on the "disruption we have experienced over the last three years" regarding how the country's legislation is made and how freedom is observed, which was a reference to the coronavirus pandemic.
In December, the two justices issued a dissent when the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case regarding the immigration policy. At the time, Gorsuch wrote that the court agreed to address a legal question that needed to be more important in its own right and normally would not have warranted expedited review.
End of the Immigration Policy
The latest development comes after the Supreme Court justice in December last year voted 5-4 to temporarily block a lower court judge's order that sought to end the immigration policy prematurely, according to Politico.
However, the Biden administration unilaterally announced plans to terminate the public health emergency earlier this month. This prompted the Supreme Court justices to remove the case from their argument calendar. The emergency was formally ended last week, including related immigration control.
Republicans strongly supported former United States President Donald Trump's use of Title 42 to reduce the number of immigrants at the border. However, many immigrant rights groups have opposed the policy, calling it inhumane.
Republican-led states, Arizona and Louisiana, filed the emergency request last year, arguing that Joe Biden's administration had already abandoned meaningful defense of the rule. This prompted other GOP-led states to intervene in the case to keep the immigration policy in effect, said NBC News.
