Haiti TPS Termination Lawsuits and Supreme Court Review

The lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haiti is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, and Haiti’s TPS designation remains in effect under a February 2, 2026, federal court stay while the justices consider the case. Haitian TPS holders keep their work authorization and protection from deportation for now, and a decision is expected by late June or early July 2026.¹

Where Haitian TPS Holders Stand Right Now

Haiti’s TPS designation is in effect. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services confirms that holders retain lawful status, and employers must continue accepting their employment authorization documents.² The February stay issued by U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes blocked the termination one day before it was scheduled to take effect, and the Supreme Court left that stay undisturbed when it agreed to hear the case in March 2026.¹

That protection is provisional. It depends on how the Supreme Court rules, or on whether the Court dismisses the case without a merits decision.

How the Termination Unfolded

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem moved against Haiti’s designation in stages. On February 20, 2025, DHS rescinded the previous administration’s 18-month extension, shortening it to 12 months.³ On July 1, 2025, DHS published a Federal Register notice formally terminating the designation effective September 2, 2025, citing “national interest” concerns about public safety, irregular migration, and vetting.⁴

After a federal court in New York blocked that July termination and ruled that TPS could not end before February 3, 2026, DHS issued a superseding termination notice on November 28, 2025, setting the new termination date for February 3, 2026.⁵ This November notice is the action directly at issue in the Supreme Court case.

The Court Rulings That Blocked Termination

The Reyes Stay in Miot v. Trump

On February 2, 2026, Judge Ana Reyes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an 83-page opinion blocking the termination. She found it “substantially likely” that Noem’s decision was preordained, pointing out that the Secretary had terminated every TPS designation that reached her desk, twelve out of twelve.⁶

The court found the government had conceded that Noem did not consult with the U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti, the State Department’s Haiti desk, or the Secretary of State before making her decision. Judge Reyes wrote that the Secretary’s description of Haiti’s conditions as merely “concerning” could not be squared with the “perfect storm of suffering” documented in the administrative record, while the State Department itself advised Americans not to travel to Haiti “for any reason.”⁶

The opinion also identified “substantial indicators that racial and national-origin animus influenced the decision-making process,” quoting Noem’s stated policy toward Haitian TPS holders: “WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.” On the balance of harms, the court noted that allowing termination would transform 352,959 “lawful immigrants into unlawful immigrants” and render tax-paying, employed people “the legally unemployable.”⁶

The government appealed to the D.C. Circuit, which denied a stay on March 6, 2026, in a 2-1 decision, finding that the harms to TPS holders outweighed the government’s interests.⁷

The Ninth Circuit Ruling on the Vacatur

A parallel case in California addressed the February 2025 rescission. In National TPS Alliance v. Noem, Judge Edward M. Chen granted partial summary judgment for the plaintiffs in September 2025, holding that the partial vacatur of Haiti’s TPS extension exceeded the Secretary’s statutory authority and was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act. The court found the process “highly truncated and condensed” and “pre-ordained without any real review,” noting that in the 35-year history of TPS, no administration had ever attempted to vacate a prior extension.⁸

On January 28, 2026, the Ninth Circuit affirmed, holding that the TPS statute gives the Secretary no power to vacate a prior designation or extension. A concurrence by Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr. concluded that the Secretary’s actions were “preordained and rooted in pretext,” citing public remarks by Noem and the President characterizing immigrants from Venezuela and Haiti as “dangerous criminals or mentally unwell.”⁹

The Supreme Court Case

On March 11, 2026, the Solicitor General filed an emergency application asking the Supreme Court to stay Judge Reyes’s order and to hear the case on an expedited basis. On March 16, 2026, the Court granted certiorari before judgment but left the stay in place, so TPS protections continued while the litigation proceeded.¹

Oral arguments were held on April 29, 2026. The government argued that TPS termination decisions should be unreviewable by courts. Plaintiffs’ counsel countered that the administration cannot “ignore the law when it tries to take away someone’s immigration status,” and pointed to the scale of the action: an attempt to strip legal status from roughly 1.3 million people across 16 countries.¹⁰

The Motion to Dismiss the Case

On June 16, 2026, the Haitian plaintiffs filed a motion asking the justices to dismiss the case as improvidently granted. The motion cited newly discovered internal DHS documents showing that Noem’s July 1 termination notice relied on what the plaintiffs called a “knowingly false statement,” specifically the claim that she had consulted with the Department of State when she had not.¹¹

According to the motion, the documents also showed that career DHS officials had recommended extending Haiti’s designation and were overridden by a political appointee’s “unusual eleventh-hour verbal directive.” A supervisor allegedly ordered staff to omit data showing zero “Known or Suspected Terrorist” hits for Haiti because a “null result” did not support the case for termination.¹²

Whether the Court will rule on the merits or grant the motion to dismiss in light of these disclosures is an open question.

Amicus Support and Congressional Action

A coalition of 19 state attorneys general, led by Massachusetts, California, and New York, filed an amicus brief arguing the termination was unlawful. The brief noted that the State Department maintains a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” designation for Haiti and warned that termination would separate families, including an estimated 50,000 U.S. citizen children with at least one Haitian TPS-holder parent.¹³

A separate brief filed on April 14, 2026, by 31 former senior DHS, State, and Justice Department officials from every administration since TPS was created described the government’s process as a “sham consultation process,” replacing traditional interagency review with “cursory, conclusory exchanges.”¹⁴

Congress has moved on a parallel track. In April 2026, Representative Ayanna Pressley used a discharge petition to force a House floor vote on H.R. 1689, sponsored by Representative Laura Gillen, which would extend Haiti’s TPS designation for three years.¹⁵ The House passed the measure, with reported vote counts varying between 220-207 and 224-204.¹⁶ The bill has been sent to the Senate, where it faces significant opposition from the Republican majority.

Who Is Affected

More than 300,000 Haitian TPS holders and their families face potential loss of legal status if the termination goes forward. Roughly 200,000 are in the U.S. workforce in healthcare, transportation, food service, agriculture, and manufacturing, including an estimated 13,000 nursing assistants and 8,000 caregivers. Advocacy groups estimate these workers generate $5.9 billion annually for the U.S. economy and pay more than $1.5 billion in federal, state, and local taxes combined.¹⁷

An estimated 50,000 U.S. citizen children have at least one Haitian TPS-holder parent, and advocates project that roughly 25,000 of those children could be pushed into poverty if their parents lose work authorization.¹⁷

What to Watch

Three outcomes are possible from the Supreme Court by late June or early July 2026. The Court could rule for the government, clearing the way for the November 2025 termination to take effect. It could rule for the plaintiffs on either the APA or equal protection grounds, keeping TPS in place. Or it could grant the plaintiffs’ motion and dismiss the case as improvidently granted based on the newly disclosed internal DHS documents, which would leave Judge Reyes’s stay intact and send the case back to the district court. Until the Court acts, USCIS continues to treat Haiti’s TPS designation and the associated employment authorization as valid.²

1
SCOTUSblog. Court Considers Whether Trump Administration Properly Ended Temporary Protected Status for Haiti
2
USCIS. Temporary Protected Status Designated Country: Haiti
3
DHS. Secretary Noem Rescinds Extension of Haiti’s Temporary Protected Status
4
Federal Register. Termination of the Designation of Haiti for Temporary Protected Status
5
Federal Register. Termination of the Designation of Haiti for Temporary Protected Status
6
Just Security. Lesly Miot v. Trump, Memorandum Opinion
7
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Miot v. Trump, No. 26-5050
8
National TPS Alliance. NTPSA v. Noem, Summary Judgment Order
9
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. National TPS Alliance v. Noem, No. 25-5724
10
Muslim Advocates. Reactions to SCOTUS Arguments on Cases Challenging Termination of TPS for Haiti, Syria
11
SCOTUSblog. Haitian Citizens Ask Justices to Throw Out Dispute Over Whether Trump Administration Properly Ended TPS
12
UCLA Law. Miot v. Trump, Motion to Dismiss Writ as Improvidently Granted
13
California Attorney General. Attorney General Bonta Urges US Supreme Court to Deny Request to Unlawfully Terminate TPS
14
Yale Law School. Clinic Files Amicus Brief Challenging Executive Order Terminating Temporary Protected Status
15
Rep. Pressley. Pressley Measure to Extend Haiti TPS Adopted by House
16
NPR. House Passes Bill Extending Protections for Haitian Migrants in the US
17
FWD.us. New Data Reveals the Immense Human and Economic Cost of Terminating Haiti Temporary Protected Status