Federal Judge Blocks Use of Title 42 to Expel Migrants on Public-Health Grounds
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the use of Trump-era rule that allows the U.S. to immediately expel illegal immigrants on the basis of public health.
Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled that the CDC’s use of Title 42 to turn away what the plaintiffs deemed are potential asylum seekers is “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedures Act dealing with agency regulations.
“It is unreasonable for the CDC to assume that it can ignore the consequences of any actions it chooses to take in the pursuit of fulfilling its goals, particularly when those actions included the extraordinary decision to suspend the codified procedural and substantive rights of non-citizens seeking safe harbor,” Sullivan said in the opinion.
After initiating litigation in 2020 when Title 42 was active under the Trump administration, the ACLU and related organizations went back to court in July 2021 to seek a complete termination of the policy. The plaintiffs argued that the rule represented an unprecedented and unlawful interpretation of the Public Health Service Act.
The defendants claimed the rule should not be subject to judicial review, contending that the decision to “issue, modify, or terminate a Title 42 order” is at the CDC’s discretion. Sullivan rejected that logic, stating that the rule is not outside the judiciary’s purview.
The court also agreed with the plaintiffs that in its Title 42 process, the CDC failed to impose the “least restrictive means necessary to prevent the spread of disease” when implementing the policy.
Multiple lower courts granted the plaintiffs the preliminary injunction to stop enforcement of Title 42. The Biden administration followed each ruling with an appeal. The administration now must halt its use of Title 42 pending further litigation.
The administration tried to end the use of Title 42 earlier in the year, but the case went to court again after a coalition of Republican-controlled states sued to keep Title 42 in place. They said that lifting the rule would fuel further chaos at an already lawless border and saddle states with financial liabilities.
Illegal border crossings topped 2 million for the fiscal year ending in August, the highest one-year total ever recorded.
Since the Trump administration first invoked it in March 2020, Title 42 has been used to expel migrants over two million times. Recently reelected Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a major opponent of President Biden’s lax immigration enforcement, called Sullivan’s decision “disastrous,” predicting that it will exacerbate the ongoing border crisis.
