Two Biden-appointed appellate judges joined a Trump appointee in reversing lower court orders that had blocked the administration's termination of Temporary Protected Status for migrants from Ethiopia and South Sudan, a ruling that undercuts district judges the administration accused of defying the Supreme Court.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals issued two nearly identical rulings Wednesday, finding that U.S. District Judges Brian Murphy and Patti Saris had acted in conflict with the Supreme Court's decision in Mullin v. Doe when they temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ending TPS for nationals of both countries. The panel, Judges Julie Rikelman and Seth Aframe, both Biden appointees, alongside Trump appointee Joshua Dunlap, concluded that the lower court orders could not stand under the high court's precedent, Fox News Digital reported.
The outcome is notable precisely because of who delivered it. Rikelman and Aframe owe their seats to President Biden. Yet both agreed that the district judges below them had overstepped, issuing procedural orders to preserve the status quo that effectively kept TPS protections alive despite a Supreme Court ruling that barred courts from blocking terminations on non-constitutional grounds.
Late last week, Judges Murphy and Saris each issued separate orders temporarily halting the administration's TPS terminations, Murphy's covering Ethiopian nationals, Saris' covering South Sudanese nationals. Both judges framed their orders as procedural moves to maintain the status quo while they considered whether plaintiffs, led by the New York-based advocacy group African Communities Together, could amend their complaints to pursue constitutional claims.
The First Circuit saw it differently. In its rulings, the majority cited the Supreme Court's June decision in Mullin v. Doe directly, writing that the high court "held that 'the TPS statute's judicial-review bar applies to all non-constitutional claims' challenging the Secretary of [Homeland Security's] determination with respect to the termination of a TPS designation."
That language left little room for the district judges' approach. The Supreme Court had acknowledged that constitutional claims might still be heard, but the lower court orders went further, effectively preserving TPS protections while the plaintiffs tried to reframe their case. The First Circuit reversed both orders, removing the blocks on the administration's terminations.
The Supreme Court's earlier ruling on TPS for other nationalities had already signaled where the judiciary was heading on these questions. Wednesday's decisions reinforced that trajectory with force.
The administration did not wait for the appellate ruling to make its displeasure known. DHS General Counsel James Percival took to X after the district court orders dropped, describing Judge Murphy's action as "mutiny against the Supreme Court" and Judge Saris' ruling as "open defiance" of the justices' decision.
That language was sharp, but the First Circuit's subsequent reversal gave it practical weight. When a panel that includes two judges appointed by the opposing party's president agrees that the lower courts conflicted with Supreme Court precedent, the charge of defiance becomes harder to dismiss as partisan overreach.
A DHS spokesperson reinforced the administration's position in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"Temporary Protected Status is exactly that, temporary. For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent."
The spokesperson called the First Circuit rulings "a win for the rule of law and common sense." Fox News Digital reached out to the offices of both Murphy and Saris for comment; no responses were reported.
The broader pattern of federal appellate courts siding with the administration on TPS terminations continues to narrow the legal ground available to opponents of the policy.
Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan, who spoke to Fox News Digital about the rulings, framed them as part of a closing chapter.
"These are clear wins for President Trump following his big win at the U.S. Supreme Court, explaining that district courts are not supposed to second guess TPS terminations, and even as this plays out, we're moving towards the end of this litigation because district courts should not be hearing these disputes, and that's what the Supreme Court said."
Wessan acknowledged that plaintiffs retain the option of amending their complaints to pursue constitutional claims, the one door the Supreme Court left open in Mullin v. Doe. But he made clear what that means in practice.
"If they want to let the plaintiffs amend their complaint, they're allowed to do that, but in the meantime, TPS is over."
That distinction matters. The plaintiffs, African Communities Together and individual TPS recipients from Ethiopia and South Sudan, had argued that DHS unlawfully ended protections in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, the federal law governing how agencies make decisions, and the Constitution. Their claims included allegations that the agency failed to properly assess conditions in both countries and that the termination decisions were motivated by racial discrimination.
The APA claims now appear foreclosed by Mullin. Whether the constitutional claims can survive on their own, and whether they can generate new injunctions, remains an open question. But the practical effect of Wednesday's rulings is immediate: TPS protections for Ethiopian and South Sudanese nationals are no longer shielded by court order.
The stakes for the affected population are concrete. The Washington Examiner reported that approximately 4,500 Ethiopian immigrants stand to lose their legal work authorization and will be required to leave the United States. Ethiopia was first granted TPS designation in December 2022 due to severe drought and armed conflict, and the designation was renewed in mid-2024. DHS determined that conditions in Ethiopia no longer meet the statutory threshold for the program.
The number of South Sudanese TPS holders affected was not specified in available reporting. But the administration's approach is consistent across nationalities. TPS revocations have already been carried out for Burmese immigrants, and enforcement preparations are underway for Haitian nationals as their TPS expiration approaches.
The program was designed by Congress as a temporary shield for nationals of countries experiencing armed conflict, natural disasters, or other extraordinary conditions. Critics on the right have long argued that successive administrations, particularly under Presidents Obama and Biden, allowed TPS to become a rolling grant of indefinite residency, renewed again and again without meaningful review of whether conditions in the home country had actually changed.
Internal Biden administration planning reinforced those concerns. A White House memo from the Biden era outlined plans to expand TPS protections to over three million noncitizens before the end of that administration, a scale that made the "temporary" label difficult to defend with a straight face.
The legal dynamic at work in this case follows a pattern that has played out repeatedly since the Trump administration began unwinding TPS designations. District judges sympathetic to plaintiffs' arguments issue temporary blocks. The administration appeals. And appellate courts, now operating under the Supreme Court's Mullin framework, reverse those blocks.
What made the Murphy and Saris orders particularly aggressive, in the administration's view, was their timing. Both judges acted after the Supreme Court had already spoken on the central legal question. Their procedural framing, preserving the status quo while plaintiffs explored constitutional amendments to their complaints, looked to the First Circuit like an end-run around Mullin, not a good-faith application of it.
The political dimensions of TPS policy extend beyond the courts. But the judicial front is where the most consequential decisions are landing right now, and the trend line is running firmly in the administration's favor.
Several questions remain unanswered. The specific constitutional claims plaintiffs intend to pursue through amended complaints have not been detailed publicly. The current status of the underlying litigation after the First Circuit reversals is unclear. And the full scope of TPS holders affected across both countries has not been publicly quantified by either side.
But the direction is unmistakable. When Biden's own appointees on the appellate bench agree that district judges overstepped, the legal argument for blocking TPS terminations on procedural grounds is running out of courtrooms. Congress wrote the word "temporary" into the statute for a reason, and the courts are finally reading it that way.
