Here's the thing. The Supreme Court already told lower courts to back off on Temporary Protected Status terminations. The First Circuit just enforced that message, reversing administrative stays on TPS for Ethiopia and South Sudan issued by U.S. District Judges Brian Murphy and Patti Saris. And then, almost immediately, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs — appointed by Barack Obama — issued a brand-new stay blocking the end of Somalia's TPS designation.
The legal pivot is worth noting. After the Supreme Court's June ruling in Mullin v. Doe sharply curtailed lower courts' ability to block TPS terminations on non-constitutional grounds, the plaintiffs — African Communities Together and allied groups — rewrote their complaint overnight. The amended filing, submitted Thursday, alleges the Trump administration violated the Fifth Amendment by terminating Somalia's TPS based on racial and national-origin discrimination. Burroughs issued the new administrative stay Friday.
The move drew an immediate response from DHS General Counsel James Percival. 'Judge Allison Burroughs just entered yet another order preventing the termination of Somalia TPS. There is no serious debate about what is going on in these cases — defiance, obstruction, and delay,' Percival wrote on X. Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan argued the order improperly grants emergency relief despite what he called legally deficient claims.
The pattern is becoming hard to ignore. One appeals court reverses two district judges for blocking TPS rollbacks. A third district judge issues a functionally identical order within days, wrapped in a freshly drafted constitutional argument. DHS Chief Counsel Percival, speaking more broadly, described the behavior as 'naked political activism' by a group of district judges — not the judiciary as a whole — who are repeatedly blocking deportations and TPS rollbacks despite guidance from higher courts.
The constitutional framing is new, and that matters procedurally. A Fifth Amendment discrimination claim is a different legal hook than the statutory arguments Mullin foreclosed, which means this stay may survive longer before the appeals court weighs in again. Whether the underlying claim holds up is a separate question the courts will have to answer.
Voltage's read: The Trump administration has a legitimate grievance here. The Supreme Court drew a line; the First Circuit enforced it; a district judge found a new line to stand on within seventy-two hours. That is either creative lawyering by the plaintiffs or evidence that some district courts are treating SCOTUS guidance as an obstacle to route around rather than a ruling to follow. Free-market, rule-of-law readers should care about this regardless of where they stand on immigration: a judiciary that treats higher-court precedent as optional is a judiciary that no one — not businesses, not individuals, not the government — can plan around. The changelog on Mullin is not even a month old. Read it.
