The Supreme Court on Friday declined to immediately halt a lawsuit brought by immigration judges challenging restrictions on their public speaking engagements.
The court’s order, a placeholder, rejects a request by the Trump administration that the justices said had “not demonstrated that it will suffer irreparable harm” at this stage of the litigation. There were no noted dissents.
Immigration judges sued over a Biden-era policy that prohibits them from making statements in their personal capacities about immigration or the agency that employs them. The National Association of Immigration Judges said such restrictions violated the judges’ First Amendment rights and interfered with their ability to guest lecture at universities and to speak to community groups about matters of public importance.
But the immediate issue for the Supreme Court concerned the proper venue for resolving employee complaints. It is a question that took on new meaning after President Trump fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel and the chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board, administrative agencies that are typically the first stop for such claims by federal employees. The outcome could have implications for other claims brought by federal government officials related to the conditions of their employment.
The Trump administration has separately fired immigration judges across the country. The judges are part of an administrative court system and make decisions about asylum claims, deportations and other related matters. They are overseen by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a division of the Justice Department.
The justices’ order came in response to an emergency application from D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, who asked them to pause the lawsuit temporarily while the administration seeks more formal review by the Supreme Court. In its response on Friday, the court said the administration could re-up its request if the district court took action before the justices have decided whether to formally review the matter.
Mr. Sauer warned that a lower-court ruling that had allowed the case to move ahead threatened “to wreak havoc” if the justices did not step in to block it.
In 2023, a district court judge dismissed the association’s case, saying the immigration judges were required by law to channel their claims through an administrative agency process. In June, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit revived the case because of the status of the government agencies that hear employee complaints. A three-judge panel said it was not clear that the independent bodies were able to receive, review and resolve federal employee claims.
The panel sent the case back to the lower court to consider whether Mr. Trump’s firing of the former special counsel and the chair of the Merit Systems Protection Board had undermined the ability of those agencies to function such that the employees should be allowed to sue directly in federal court.
The Trump administration filed its application to the Supreme Court in late November.
Lawyers for the judges had urged the court to deny the administration’s request to stop the group’s challenge, referring to the policy as a gag order and arguing that the suit needed to proceed expeditiously so it could be lifted.
“There is no good reason for further delay, especially when the gag order at issue prevents immigration judges from sharing their perspectives with the public every day it remains in effect,” a lawyer for the group, Ramya Krishnan, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, said in a statement.
Ann Marimow covers the Supreme Court for The Times from Washington.
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