Haiti TPS Lawsuits: Rulings, Supreme Court, and Who’s Affected

Federal courts have blocked the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, and the Haiti TPS lawsuit is now before the U.S. Supreme Court. As of mid-2026, roughly 330,000 Haitian TPS holders keep their legal status and work authorization while the Court weighs whether the government followed the law when it moved to terminate the program.¹ A decision is expected by late June or early July 2026.²

What Haitian TPS Holders Should Do Now

Every lower court injunction remains in force while the Supreme Court deliberates. Employment Authorization Documents held by Haitian TPS beneficiaries under category codes A-12 or C-19 are still valid, including cards with facially expired dates falling anywhere from July 22, 2017 through February 3, 2026.³

Employers must accept those documents. Taking adverse action against a worker because of the uncertainty around Haiti TPS can expose the employer to discrimination liability.³ The situation is fluid. Watch USCIS guidance for updates once the Court rules.

How the Termination Effort Started

In July 2024, the Biden administration extended and redesignated Haiti’s TPS for 18 months, with the new period set to run through February 3, 2026.⁴

Within weeks of taking office in 2025, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem moved to unwind that protection. A Federal Register notice on February 24, 2025 announced a “partial vacatur” cutting the extension from 18 months to 12 and pulling the end date forward to August 2025. When courts blocked that step, DHS issued a formal termination notice on July 1, 2025 setting a September 2025 end date, then a superseding notice on November 28, 2025 terminating the designation effective February 3, 2026.⁴

Secretary Noem stated that “there are no extraordinary and temporary conditions in Haiti that prevent Haitian nationals from returning in safety,” citing “emerging signals of hope,” a newly authorized U.N. gang suppression force, and projected GDP growth. She separately determined that maintaining TPS was “contrary to the national interest,” pointing to visa overstay rates, a rise in border encounters with Haitian nationals, and executive orders directing the rescission of policies contributing to the “continued presence of illegal aliens.”⁴

The Rulings That Stopped the Termination

Three federal cases have been the most consequential.

National TPS Alliance v. Noem (Ninth Circuit)

Filed February 19, 2025 in the Northern District of California by the National TPS Alliance and individual Haitian and Venezuelan plaintiffs, the case argued under the Administrative Procedure Act that the TPS statute authorizes only three actions by the Secretary: designation, extension, and termination. It gives her no power to “vacate” an extension already in effect. Plaintiffs also raised Fifth Amendment equal protection claims alleging animus based on race and national origin.⁵

The district court granted emergency relief on March 31, 2025.⁶ On January 28, 2026, a Ninth Circuit panel of Judges Kim McLane Wardlaw, Salvador Mendoza Jr., and Anthony Johnstone affirmed on the merits, holding the TPS statute contains no explicit, implied, or inherent authority for the Secretary to vacate a prior designation or extension, and that a termination cannot take effect earlier than the expiration of the most recent extension. Judge Mendoza wrote separately that the Secretary’s actions were “arbitrary and capricious” and “rooted in pretext,” used to “cloak animus on the basis of race and national origin.”⁷

Miot v. Trump (District of Columbia)

Miot became the central challenge to the November 2025 termination. On February 2, 2026, one day before the designation was set to expire, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes issued an 83-page opinion staying the termination under 5 U.S.C. § 705.⁸⁹

Judge Reyes concluded it was “substantially likely” that Secretary Noem terminated Haiti’s designation out of “hostility to nonwhite immigrants.” The opinion cited Noem’s public statements describing immigrants from Haiti and other nonwhite countries as “leeches,” “entitlement junkies,” and “foreign invaders,” as well as a social media post reading “WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.”⁸

On the statutory consultation requirement, Judge Reyes found the Secretary had not consulted with the U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, the U.S. Embassy, the State Department’s regional office or Haiti desk, the Secretary of State, or Congress. The only documented interagency communication was a brief email exchange in which a State Department employee told a DHS staffer there would be “no foreign policy concerns” with the change. That exchange did not address conditions in Haiti.¹⁰

Judge Reyes also ruled the termination likely violated the APA as arbitrary and capricious. The government ignored its own State Department travel advisory urging Americans not to travel to Haiti “for any reason” while claiming conditions permitted safe return. Its national interest analysis failed to account for the economic contributions of Haitian TPS holders and focused instead on Haitians living abroad or in the country illegally rather than the lawful TPS holders who would actually be affected.⁸

Haitian Evangelical Clergy Association v. Trump (E.D.N.Y.)

Filed March 14, 2025 by the Haitian Evangelical Clergy Association, SEIU Local 32BJ, and nine individual Haitian TPS holders, this case challenged the partial vacatur. On July 1, 2025, Judge Brian M. Cogan ruled the Secretary lacked statutory authority to partially vacate a TPS designation. Final judgment entered July 15, 2025 required that any termination date be no earlier than February 3, 2026. The government appealed to the Second Circuit on September 25, 2025, and the judgment remains in effect during that appeal.¹¹

The Supreme Court Case

After the D.C. Circuit denied the government’s emergency request to lift Judge Reyes’s stay in a 2-1 decision on March 6, 2026, the administration went to the Supreme Court, asking for a stay and asking the Court to treat the filing as a petition for certiorari before judgment.¹²¹³ On March 16, 2026, the Court granted the petition and consolidated the Haiti case (Trump v. Miot, No. 25-1084) with a parallel Syrian TPS challenge (Mullin v. Doe, No. 25-1083), leaving the lower court injunctions in place.¹⁴

Three questions are before the Court:

Whether the TPS statute bars federal courts from reviewing the Secretary’s termination decisions at all.
Whether the termination met federal administrative requirements, particularly the consultation mandate.
Whether the termination of Haiti’s TPS violated the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee.

The Government’s Position

Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued the statute’s language is absolute: “There is no judicial review of any determination” by the Secretary regarding designation, termination, or extension. That bar, according to the government, covers every subsidiary step including consultation and procedural compliance, and Congress chose to leave these matters to the political process.¹⁵ On equal protection, the government characterized statements by the President and the Secretary about immigrants as “unilluminating” references to poverty and crime rather than race, and said the termination rested on “weighty foreign-policy and national-security considerations.”¹⁶

The Challengers’ Position

Geoffrey M. Pipoly, representing the Haitian TPS holders, argued that while Congress may have shielded the substance of the country-conditions judgment from review, it did not exempt the government from following mandatory procedures, including consultation with other agencies. He pointed to the brief email exchange as evidence that the consultation requirement was effectively ignored, and called the termination a “preordained result” driven by “racial animus towards non-white immigrants.”²

Signals From Oral Argument

The Court heard about one hour and 45 minutes of argument on April 29, 2026, and the justices appeared divided. Justices Sotomayor and Jackson pressed the government on how Congress could require specific procedural steps if those steps were entirely beyond judicial review; Jackson also argued the district court’s factual finding of racial animus deserved deference.²¹⁶

Chief Justice Roberts appeared skeptical of the government’s reliance on the 2018 travel ban decision in Trump v. Hawaii, noting that case involved entry restrictions on people outside the country, while this one concerns people “already present” in the United States with lawful status. He suggested the government’s argument could represent a “significant expansion” of that precedent. Justice Barrett questioned both sides, probing whether requiring a more robust consultation process would amount to a “box-checking exercise” if courts could not review the substance of the decision. Justice Alito appeared more sympathetic to the government, suggesting the procedural analysis may have been adequate and cautioning against using “procedural faults” to force judicial intervention.²¹⁶

Who the Ruling Will Affect

About 330,000 Haitian nationals hold TPS in the United States, and around 200,000 are in the workforce. An estimated 50,000 U.S. citizen children have at least one Haitian TPS-holding parent, and roughly 25,000 of those children could be pushed into poverty if a parent lost income and work authorization.¹

The ruling will reach further than Haiti. TPS currently covers nationals of 17 countries, protecting more than 1.3 million people in total, according to legal organizations involved in the litigation.¹⁷ A decision on whether the Secretary’s termination decisions can be reviewed at all, and on what the consultation requirement demands, will shape how future administrations handle every TPS country designation.

1
FWD.us. Haiti TPS Fact Sheet
2
SCOTUSblog. Court Considers Whether Trump Administration Properly Ended Temporary Protected Status for Haiti
3
Haitian Bridge Alliance. Letters for Employers Regarding TPS for Haiti
4
Federal Register. Termination of the Designation of Haiti for Temporary Protected Status
5
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. National TPS Alliance v. Noem
6
National TPS Alliance. NTPSA v. Noem FAQ
7
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. National TPS Alliance v. Noem, No. 25-5724
8
WBUR. Read the Court Opinion by Ana Reyes on TPS Haiti
9
USCIS. Temporary Protected Status Designated Country: Haiti
10
Just Security. Lesly Miot v. Trump: February 2, 2026 Order
11
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Haitian Evangelical Clergy Association v. Trump
12
CourtListener. Fritz Emmanuel Lesly Miot v. Donald Trump, No. 26-5050
13
U.S. Supreme Court. Trump v. Miot Stay Application
14
SCOTUSblog. Temporary Protected Status and the Supreme Court: An Explainer
15
U.S. Supreme Court. Merits Brief for the United States, No. 25-1083
16
New York Times. Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Immigration TPS
17
International Refugee Assistance Project. Legal Teams React to SCOTUS Arguments on Cases Challenging Termination of TPS for Haiti and Syria