Supreme Court forces Trump to face immigration judges’ free speech fight

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court refused to prohibit a lower court from reviewing an administrative board’s competency on Friday, rejecting a request from President Donald Trump in an ongoing fight over the free speech of immigration judges.

In June, an appeals court ordered the inquiry into whether the Merit Systems Protection Board and Office of Special Counsel are meeting their obligations amid Trump’s efforts to oust critics. Trump filed an emergency application to pause the ruling, calling the inquiry a “fishing expedition” that risks intrusive and needless discovery and raises serious separation-of-powers concerns.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, halted the inquiry until the justices could review Trump’s appeal. In a short order on Friday, the high court vacated Roberts’ temporary order, allowing the lower court’s review to move forward. The court explained that the administration hadn’t demonstrated that it would be irreparably harmed by the review.

The dispute began as a policy challenge to a rule barring immigration judges — U.S. attorney general-appointed attorneys who preside over deportation cases — from publicly expressing personal views on immigration. The National Association of Immigration Judges filed suit in 2020, but it was dismissed in 2023 for jurisdictional issues.

On appeal, the association argued the lawsuit should be treated as an enforcement challenge to an unconstitutional policy, rather than an employment action that must go through the Merit Systems Protection Board.

The Fourth Circuit raised serious concerns about whether the board and special counsel can independently review adverse actions against federal employees, noting that Trump fired the Office of Special Counsel chief and removed MSPB members earlier this year.

These and other adjudicatory boards were created under the Civil Service Reform Act.

Trump argued that Supreme Court precedent requires federal employees to exhaust administrative remedies before filing a case in federal court. The administration chastised the appeals court for trying to revise precedent based on recent factual developments.

“‘[U]nelected judges’ do not get ‘to update the intent of unchanged congressional statutes if the court believes recent political events … alter the operation of a statute from the way Congress intended,’” U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer wrote. “Further, the court of appeals’ unheard-of approach to channeling risks ‘far-reaching implications’ for all manner of jurisdictional schemes, which may be textually unambiguous yet susceptible to concerns that those schemes too are purportedly not working as Congress intended.”

The National Association of Immigration Judges said its claims couldn’t be raised under the CSRA. The Supreme Court held that Congress intended to keep administrative claims out of district courts to insulate such actions from presidential control and “prevent regression back to the ‘spoils’ system of the 19th century, in which employees advanced on the basis of political or personal favoritism," the group said.

“Absent that independence, however, the inference that Congress intended to withdraw district court jurisdiction over federal employment claims may no longer be appropriate,” the group wrote.

If the Supreme Court did not intervene, the administration warned that the government would lose its opportunity to challenge the Fourth Circuit decision. The Trump administration said it would ask the justices to formally review the issue on the court’s merit docket to prevent other lower courts from issuing similar rulings.

Ramya Krishnan, an attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute who argued the case on behalf of NAIJ, praised the decision and pushed the justices to similarly decline the government’s merits appeal.

“The Supreme Court was right to reject the government’s request for a stay of proceedings,” Krishnan said in a statement. “It should also quickly reject the government’s soon-to-be filed cert petition. The restrictions on immigration judges’ free speech rights are unconstitutional and it’s intolerable that this prior restraint is still in place.”

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