“If a judgment procured through such open collusion is allowed to remain in effect, any agency can avoid the strictures of the APA by advertising its unwillingness to defend a disfavored regulation and by immediately acquiescing to nationwide relief,” Baltimore, Columbus, New Haven and Centro Legal de la Raza told the Court in their application.
The Supreme Court did not decide on Tuesday that immigration judges lose the power to pause deportation cases. It denied an emergency stay in one sentence, gave no reasons, and left standing a judgment that Texas and the Trump Justice Department asked for within hours of Texas filing suit and that a federal judge signed the same day. Headlines said the justices stripped judges of the power. The 154-page application the Court was answering, which we read along with the docket and the judgment inside it, shows how it actually went: Texas sued on June 22, the two sides jointly moved for a consent judgment before the Justice Department had entered an appearance, and a rule that took 264 days to move from proposal to final text was vacated nationwide that same day.
One Sentence, No Reasons
The docket entry is the whole order: “Application (26A500) for stay presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.” The cities of Baltimore, Columbus and New Haven and the legal-aid group Centro Legal de la Raza filed on October 9. Texas and the federal government answered on October 22, and the applicants replied the next day.
A stay denial is not a finding that the judgment was proper. The case is alive: the Fifth Circuit denied a stay and a request for summary reversal on September 29, and the applicants’ appeal over whether they may intervene is still pending. The reports we read mention no dissent from Tuesday’s order. What changed is practical. The rule stays dead while the courts decide whether anyone besides Texas and the Justice Department gets a say.
Administrative closure lets an immigration judge take a case off the active docket without deciding it. Roughly 360,000 migrants have been granted it since 1990, and closed cases are not reopened automatically but can be returned to active deportation proceedings.
A Lawsuit That Lasted One Day
The rule is the Biden Justice Department’s “Efficient Case and Docket Management in Immigration Proceedings.” It was proposed on September 8, 2023, finalized on May 29, 2024 after 264 days, and took effect July 29, 2024. It was in force for 693 days. After the change in administration, the agency’s new acting director put in writing that it would not defend the rule against legal challenge, the application says, and the agency did not start the rulemaking the Administrative Procedure Act requires to repeal one.
Texas sued in the Wichita Falls Division of the Northern District of Texas, where one judge sits, Chief Judge Reed O’Connor. The complaint, the joint motion for a consent judgment and the final judgment all carry the same date, June 22. Per the application, the joint motion came “within hours, and before any summons issued or DOJ had even noticed an appearance.”
The judgment declares the rule “in excess of statutory authority and contrary to law,” vacates it, and permanently enjoins the government from enforcing it or from “promulgating regulations that permit immigration judges the authority to administratively close removal proceedings without reaching the merits of a case absent an express statutory basis.” It also records that the parties “waive any right to appeal.” The vacated rule is the entire rule, identified by its Federal Register citation, though Texas challenged only the closure provisions, the applicants say.
A footnote in the joint motion is the tell. The Justice Department stated its position that the Administrative Procedure Act “does not authorize a court to vacate an agency rule,” and then “agrees not to pursue this position in this case,” reserving the right to argue it elsewhere. It held the argument that would have defeated the remedy it was requesting, and set it down for one docket.
The Court Has Seen This Move Before
In June 2022, in Arizona v. City and County of San Francisco, the Court dismissed a case as improvidently granted, and Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch, wrote separately. The government, he said, had “seized upon one of the now-consent judgments against it” and “leveraged it as a basis to immediately repeal the Rule, without using notice-and-comment procedures.” He called the tactic “rulemaking-by-collective-acquiescence,” borrowing a phrase from a Ninth Circuit dissent, and wrote: “These maneuvers raise a host of important questions. The most fundamental is whether the Government’s actions, all told, comport with the principles of administrative law.”
That government was the Biden administration, and the rule it let die was Trump’s public charge rule. The principle those four justices stated did not depend on whose rule was on the table, and neither should the Court’s answer now. The applicants argue this case is worse: in the earlier cases the government gave up after judgments had been entered against the rule, while here it “never even attempted to defend the Rule.” They also cite Just Security’s tally of 2025 cases in which the Trump Justice Department joined plaintiffs to wipe out a regulation by consent judgment, three of the four it names filed in Texas federal courts.
The framing that spread Tuesday, that the Supreme Court did this, serves everyone involved. The administration gets to say a court did it, the Texas judge gets to say the parties agreed, and the Court gets to say nothing. When the Court let the White House ballroom go forward last week, Roberts wrote a dissent. On this application, the reports we read mention none.
Who Pays for the Shortcut
Centro Legal says the judgment will return 80 to 100 of its closed cases to active dockets, each needing 40 to 200 hours of unpaid work. That is between 3,200 hours (80 cases times 40) and 20,000 hours (100 times 200) at one legal-aid group, from its own declaration in the application’s appendix. The cities say crime victims who need visas may stop cooperating with police if a pending case puts them at risk of deportation. The same Justice Department has fired more than 100 immigration judges in about a year, so the bench that would use the power is changing too.
We think this is collusion in the ordinary sense of the word. The agency announced it would not defend its own rule, a friendly state sued, and a judgment that vacated the rule, bound future administrations and waived appeal was signed the day the suit was filed. There is a lawful route for a government that thinks a regulation is wrong: propose its repeal, take comments, publish a reasoned final rule. It chose the route with no public record, and the Court that warned about that route in 2022 had a chance to say so again and said one sentence.
The next move belongs to the Fifth Circuit, on whether the cities and Centro Legal may intervene at all. The applicants have already said that if it affirms, this is a candidate for certiorari. Until a court reaches the merits of how the judgment was obtained, the template stays available to any agency that wants a rule gone without defending it.