The Supreme Court Just Heeded One of Ketanji Brown Jackson's Sharpest Dissents

"With no noted dissents, the justices refused to let the Trump administration immediately revoke Temporary Protected Status for more than 350,000 immigrants from Haiti and Syria. Instead, the court allowed these immigrants to continue living and working in the United States legally while it reviews the government's arguments that it can strip them of protections overnight."

"For 10 months, Jackson has been fighting her colleagues' callous treatment of immigrants whose legal status was abruptly terminated by the Trump administration. In one extraordinary dissent, she alone castigated the conservative supermajority for its 'grave misuse' of the shadow docket to privilege the 'bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families' pleas for the stability our government has promised them.'"

"These condemnations may well have shamed the court into doing exactly what Jackson urged: resolve this dispute through the ordinary process-while maintaining the status quo for immigrants-rather than issuing another snap judgment for the administration that upends hundreds of thousands of lives."

The Supreme Court declined to let the Trump administration immediately revoke Temporary Protected Status for more than 350,000 immigrants from Haiti and Syria. The justices chose to review the case through normal procedures with full briefing, oral arguments, and deliberation rather than through expedited shadow docket decisions. This decision maintains legal protections and work authorization for these immigrants during the review process. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has been instrumental in opposing the conservative majority's previous use of the shadow docket to rapidly terminate immigrant protections. Her sustained advocacy and dissents criticizing the misuse of executive power appear to have influenced the court toward this more measured approach. Trump's attack on Temporary Protected Status represents a significant nativist policy initiative in his second term.

Read at Slate Magazine