Supreme Court rebuffs Trump in immigration judges’ free-speech case

The Trump administration suffered a rare defeat at the Supreme Court on Friday, as the justices turned down an emergency request to halt a lawsuit over the government’s effort to bar immigration judges from speaking publicly about their work.

In a brief order, the high court suggested it might step into the dispute in the future, but allowed the litigation to continue to play out in the lower courts.

“At this stage, the Government has not demonstrated that it will suffer irreparable harm without a stay,” the unsigned, one-paragraph order said.

No justice noted any dissent from the ruling.

The ruling sullies the Trump administration’s near-perfect record at the Supreme Court this year on emergency appeals filed on the so-called shadow docket.

Two weeks ago, Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the high court to take immediate action to head off “disruptive” and “destabilizing uncertainty” caused by an appeals court ruling in June that suggested federal government employees might be able to press lawsuits in federal court because of turmoil at a federal agency that oversees employment-related disputes.

The justices said the Trump administration is free to come back to the Supreme Court for emergency relief if federal officials were ordered to testify or turn over records to the National Association of Immigration Judges.

The judges’ union filed suit in 2020 over a policy enacted during the first Trump administration that prohibited immigration judges from public comments about their work. Previously, judges were free to discuss those issues, if they made clear they were not speaking on behalf of the Justice Department, which runs the immigration courts.

An attorney for the union, Ramya Krishnan, lauded the high court’s decision.

“The Supreme Court was right to reject the government’s request for a stay of proceedings,” said Krishnan, a lawyer with the Knight First Amendment Institute. “The restrictions on immigration judges’ free speech rights are unconstitutional and it’s intolerable that this prior restraint is still in place.”

Spokespeople for the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.