A federal judge appointed by President Biden issued an administrative stay on Friday preserving Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopian nationals, less than a month after the Supreme Court ruled 6, 3 that lower courts generally lack authority to second-guess the Department of Homeland Security on exactly these decisions. The Department’s top lawyer called the move “mutiny.”
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy of the District of Massachusetts granted the stay in African Communities Together v. Mullin, temporarily blocking the Trump administration from terminating TPS protections for Ethiopians while the court considers whether plaintiffs may still press constitutional claims left open by the high court’s June 25 ruling. The order came just hours after a second Massachusetts judge, Senior U.S. District Judge Patti Saris, issued her own administrative stay halting the termination of TPS for South Sudanese nationals in a related case.
The twin stays landed like a provocation. The Supreme Court’s decision in Mullin v. Doe was supposed to settle the question. The 6, 3 majority significantly narrowed lower courts’ power to block DHS decisions designating or terminating TPS, holding that federal courts generally cannot hear Administrative Procedure Act challenges to those decisions. The majority left one narrow door ajar: whether constitutional claims might still proceed. Murphy walked straight through it.
This is not Murphy’s first collision with the administration’s immigration enforcement, or with the Supreme Court itself. Fox News Digital reported that Murphy has now had orders restricting deportations overruled by the Supreme Court twice. Earlier this year, he sided with challengers and granted a motion to postpone DHS’s termination of Ethiopia’s TPS designation, finding that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on claims that DHS failed to follow procedures Congress established for ending TPS.
That earlier ruling drew sharp language from Murphy himself. The Washington Examiner reported that Murphy wrote in his opinion: “Fundamental to this case, and indeed to our constitutional system, is the principle that the will of the President does not supersede that of Congress.”
The Supreme Court apparently disagreed with how Murphy applied that principle. Its June ruling pulled the rug out from under the APA theory Murphy had relied on. But rather than dissolve his prior injunction, Murphy issued a fresh administrative stay, this time anchored to the constitutional claims the high court had not foreclosed.
DHS General Counsel James Percival did not mince words. In a post on X, Percival connected Murphy’s latest order to an earlier episode in which the judge halted a deportation flight to South Sudan:
“Remember when that district judge rerouted a plane with child rapists headed for South Sudan? The judge made ICE land in Djibouti to face Malaria and terrorist rocket attacks from Yemen. Fun fact: it was the very same Judge Brian Murphy who entered a lawless TPS order today!”
DHS has alleged that Murphy’s prior order forced ICE officers to land at a U.S. military base in Djibouti, where they faced malaria exposure and rocket attack threats from groups in neighboring Yemen. The full details of that May 2025 incident, including whether it prompted contempt proceedings or was otherwise resolved, remain unclear.
The high court’s 6, 3 decision in Mullin v. Doe was widely seen as a major victory for the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. The ruling held that Congress had stripped federal courts of jurisdiction to review DHS decisions on TPS through the Administrative Procedure Act. DOJ attorneys had argued in their Supreme Court brief that “Congress forbade federal courts to second-guess TPS determinations, no matter whether courts would cavil with the final outcome,” as the Washington Examiner noted.
The decision was supposed to clear the path for DHS to wind down TPS designations the administration considers no longer justified. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem had determined in December 2025 that conditions in Ethiopia no longer warranted TPS and announced the designation would terminate after a 60-day wind-down period, with protections ending February 13, 2026.
The pattern of federal judges blocking Trump administration policy initiatives has become familiar enough to generate its own legal shorthand. Murphy’s Friday order fits squarely within it, a single district judge in Massachusetts effectively suspending a federal policy that the Supreme Court just affirmed the executive branch has broad authority to carry out.
Judge Saris, for her part, was more cautious in framing her own stay on South Sudan TPS. She described her order as “not a ruling on the merits”, a signal that she was preserving the status quo while the legal landscape settles, not issuing a final judgment.
The reaction from the right was swift and pointed. Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, posted on X:
“These Democrat operatives in robes do not have the power to do this. The Supreme Court just made that crystal clear. So it’s time to ignore these clearly lawless orders.”
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter struck a similar note:
“These puny little district court judges have been overruled so many times by the supreme court, especially on immigration, I think it’s time for the president to take his constitutional oath seriously, and ignore them.”
The calls to disregard lower court orders raise serious constitutional questions of their own. But the frustration behind them is grounded in a concrete pattern: the Supreme Court issues a ruling meant to resolve a dispute, and within weeks a district judge finds a new procedural foothold to reimpose the same restraint.
The administration has faced this dynamic across multiple policy areas. Courts have blocked Trump executive actions on H-1B visa fees, and judges have intervened on everything from SNAP reform to voting requirements. The TPS cases, though, carry special weight because the Supreme Court spoke directly to the question, and spoke clearly.
The stakes extend well beyond the approximately 26,700 Ethiopian nationals DHS estimated could qualify for TPS. The Associated Press reported that the Trump administration has terminated TPS designations for 13 of 17 countries that had protections under Biden, affecting over one million migrants. Hundreds of thousands of TPS holders from multiple nationalities are challenging similar terminations in federal courts across the country.
The Biden administration first granted Ethiopians TPS in 2022. Then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas pointed to ongoing armed conflict, widespread violence, human rights abuses, and food insecurity as justification. The protections took effect December 12, 2022, and were extended through December 12, 2025.
When Noem reviewed the designation in December 2025, she reached the opposite conclusion: conditions no longer warranted the protections. That determination, made by the cabinet official Congress charged with making it, is precisely the kind of executive judgment the Supreme Court said lower courts should not second-guess through APA litigation.
Yet here we are. Murphy’s order does not rest on the APA. It rests on the narrow constitutional opening the Supreme Court left. The plaintiffs in African Communities Together v. Mullin revised their complaint after the June ruling to focus on constitutional claims, and Murphy’s stay preserves the status quo while the court decides whether those claims may go forward.
The legal question is whether that narrow opening is a genuine constitutional avenue or a convenient escape hatch that allows district judges to reach the same result the Supreme Court just foreclosed through a different procedural door. The administration has not yet publicly detailed its next move, whether it will seek an emergency appeal, ask Murphy to lift the stay, or take the matter back to the Supreme Court.
A DHS spokeswoman, Lauren Bis, characterized Murphy’s earlier TPS ruling as “just the latest example of judicial activists trying to prevent President Trump from restoring integrity to America’s legal immigration system,” as the AP reported.
The broader trend of federal judges permanently blocking Trump executive orders has tested the boundaries of judicial power throughout this administration. But few cases illustrate the tension as sharply as Murphy’s. The Supreme Court ruled. Murphy found a workaround. And the policy remains frozen.
Several questions remain unanswered. What specific constitutional claims are the Ethiopian TPS plaintiffs now pursuing? Has the administration formally moved to lift Murphy’s stay or filed an emergency appeal? What is the current status of the May 2025 deportation flight incident that DHS says stranded ICE officers in Djibouti? African Communities Together has not publicly responded to requests for comment.
The legal architecture is clear enough. Congress gave the executive branch authority over TPS. The Supreme Court confirmed that authority and stripped lower courts of APA jurisdiction to override it. A single district judge, one who has been reversed by the Supreme Court twice on deportation matters, found a new path to the same destination.
Meanwhile, the immigration cases continue to multiply. Courts across the country are weighing challenges to Trump administration immigration policies on multiple fronts. The TPS fight is only one theater in a broader legal conflict over who controls the nation’s immigration system, the elected branches or individual judges with lifetime appointments and strong opinions about how that system should work.
When the Supreme Court speaks 6, 3 and a district judge answers with a fresh stay three weeks later, the question stops being about Ethiopia or TPS. It becomes about whether a ruling from the highest court in the land actually settles anything at all.
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