The U.S. Supreme Court this week rebuffed immigration judges who challenged limits on their capacity to weigh in on public policy.
In 2020, immigration judges sued the government over a provision limiting their ability to speak publicly about their job, arguing it infringed their free speech rights.
The National Association of Immigration Judges said such restrictions interfered with their ability to guest lecture at universities and to speak to community groups about matters of public importance, an issue that has taken on greater significance as Trump has put new pressure on the immigration system.
Judges, who are part of an administrative court system, rule on asylum petitions, deportations, and other such things
The Executive Office for Immigration Review, a Justice Department agency, administers them.
The case presents a legal problem regarding the correct forum for adjudicating such employee complaints.
Internal government agencies like the Office of Special Counsel and the Merit Systems Protection Board usually receive complaints first
But Trump dismissed the heads of both those offices last year.
In June, a three-judge panel of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said a district court should reconsider whether immigration judges could make their case in federal courts that otherwise would be initially closed to them because it was not clear that those independent bodies can handle federal employee claims.
The Supreme Court disagreed
The justices’ unsigned order was procedural and allows the litigation to proceed in lower courts.
But the justices ruled the Fourth Circuit crossed the line, basically deciding the case on issues neither side had raised.
The court did so without giving either side a chance to address its theory,” they wrote in a five page opinion
Federal courts are not “roving commissions” licensed to “sally forth each day looking for wrongs to right,” the court said, quoting from earlier opinions.
There were no noted dissents.
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, would have gone further and ruled that the Fourth Circuit also erred on the fundamental legal issues
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche hailed the court’s decision and reversal of the Fourth Circuit.
“Judges should be judges resolving the case before them and should never try to seize Congress’s role,” he wrote in a post on X. “This opinion sends a clear message: lower courts must accept that the law is the law, no matter the ‘political controversies of the day. ’”
The decision comes as the Trump administration has fired immigration judges around the country and pressured those remaining to deport more people
In 2023, a district court judge dismissed the association’s petition before Trump returned to office, saying the immigration judges were legally compelled to direct their complaints through an administrative agency process.
But the appeals court revived the matter, noting that political realities cast doubt on whether the administrative process was “functioning as Congress intended. ”
The panel stated it will not let its “black robes insulate [it] from taking notice of items in the public record.”
The Trump administration then asked the Supreme Court for emergency relief and to hear the case. The justices took the matter without hearing oral arguments.
The Supreme Court’s ruling was disheartening, said Alex Abdo, litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, which represents the immigration judges.
Public servants shouldn’t have to wade through cumbersome and futile administrative procedures before challenging broad restrictions on their speech,” he said
This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
