A federal judge appointed by President Biden issued a new order 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 block such decisions, and it is not his first clash with the administration over immigration enforcement.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy on Friday granted an administrative stay in African Communities Together v. Mullin, temporarily keeping TPS protections in place for an estimated 26,700 Ethiopian nationals while his court considers whether the plaintiffs can pursue constitutional claims. The order came from the same District of Massachusetts bench that has repeatedly served as a roadblock to the Trump administration's immigration agenda, and just hours after a second Massachusetts judge issued a nearly identical stay for South Sudanese nationals.
The timing is what makes the ruling so striking. On June 25, the Supreme Court handed down a 6, 3 decision in Mullin v. Doe that significantly narrowed the legal ground beneath cases like Murphy's. The high court held that lower courts generally cannot hear Administrative Procedure Act challenges to DHS decisions designating or terminating TPS. The ruling did leave open the possibility that constitutional claims might still proceed, and Murphy's new stay hangs on exactly that sliver of daylight.
The administration's response was swift and blunt. DHS General Counsel James Percival took to X to connect Friday's ruling to an earlier, more dramatic confrontation between Murphy and the federal immigration apparatus. Percival wrote:
"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!"
Percival was referring to an incident in May 2025, when Murphy issued an order halting a deportation flight bound for South Sudan. DHS alleged that the order left ICE officers stranded at a U.S. military base in Djibouti, exposed to malaria and the threat of rocket attacks from terrorist groups operating in nearby Yemen.
That episode alone would make Murphy a notable figure in the ongoing legal battles over immigration enforcement. But it is only part of the picture.
Earlier in 2026, Murphy had already sided with the TPS challengers once, granting a motion to postpone DHS's termination of Ethiopia's TPS designation. He found at the time that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on claims that DHS had failed to follow the procedures Congress established for ending TPS. In that earlier ruling, Murphy wrote that "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."
That reasoning rested heavily on APA grounds, the very grounds the Supreme Court later pulled out from under lower courts in Mullin v. Doe. After the June 25 ruling, the Trump administration argued that Murphy's injunction had been fatally undermined and should be lifted. Murphy's response was Friday's administrative stay, which shifts the legal basis to constitutional claims the plaintiffs have now pivoted to assert.
The move keeps TPS protections alive while the court considers whether those new claims can go forward. But to the administration's allies, the maneuver looks less like careful jurisprudence and more like a judge searching for any available hook to reach the same result the Supreme Court just told him he could not reach through the APA.
Murphy was not even the only Massachusetts federal judge to block a TPS termination on Friday. Hours before his order, Senior U.S. District Judge Patti Saris issued her own administrative stay preserving TPS protections for South Sudanese nationals while she considers whether plaintiffs in that case may amend their lawsuit. Saris said her order was "not a ruling on the merits" and was simply meant to maintain the status quo while the court works through the case.
Two stays from two judges in the same district on the same day, both issued in the immediate wake of a Supreme Court ruling that was supposed to resolve this exact kind of challenge, the pattern is hard to miss. Murphy is now the second jurist in Massachusetts to block the Trump administration's effort to end TPS for migrant groups, and the administration has twice before taken Murphy's orders to the Supreme Court on deportation matters and won both times.
The rulings drew sharp responses from prominent conservative legal figures. Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, wrote 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."
Those calls, to simply disregard a federal court order, reflect a level of frustration that has been building for months. The Supreme Court's 6, 3 ruling in Mullin v. Doe was widely understood as a decisive check on lower courts that had been issuing nationwide injunctions against DHS immigration actions. When the ink was barely dry and two Massachusetts judges issued new stays on similar grounds, the reaction from the right was predictable: the ruling changed nothing because the judges will not let it.
The Biden administration first granted Ethiopians Temporary Protected Status in 2022, pointing to ongoing armed conflict, widespread violence, human rights abuses, and food insecurity. Then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas cited those conditions as justification. Protections took effect on December 12, 2022, and were later extended through December 12, 2025.
When the Trump administration took office, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem determined in December 2025 that conditions in Ethiopia no longer justified the designation. She announced that Ethiopia's TPS would terminate after a 60-day wind-down period, with protections set to end on February 13, 2026. That termination was part of a broader effort: the Trump administration has moved to end TPS designations for 13 of the 17 countries that held protections under the Biden administration, affecting more than one million people in total.
But Murphy's earlier injunction blocked the February deadline, and Friday's stay keeps the protections in place yet again. For the approximately 26,700 Ethiopian nationals who could qualify, the legal limbo continues. For the administration, it is another round in a fight the Supreme Court was supposed to have settled.
Several questions remain unresolved. The specific constitutional claims the plaintiffs are now asserting have not been publicly detailed in the available reporting. Whether Murphy's administrative stay and his earlier injunction are functionally the same order or separate legal instruments is also unclear. And the status of the ICE officers DHS said were stranded in Djibouti after Murphy's May 2025 deportation order, whether they were safely returned and what consequences followed, remains an open question.
Fox News Digital reached out to African Communities Together, the plaintiff organization in the case, for comment. No response has been reported.
When the Supreme Court rules 6, 3 that lower courts cannot do something, and a lower court finds a way to do it anyway within weeks, the problem is not a gap in the law. It is a judge who has decided the law does not apply to him.
