Supreme Court says Trump-era border restriction will remain in effect while legal challenges play out

he Supreme Court said Tuesday that the controversial Trump-era border restriction known as Title 42 will remain in effect while legal challenges play out, a move that ensures that federal officials will be able to continue to swiftly expel migrants at US borders at least for the next several months.

The 5-4 order is a victory for Republican-led states that urged the Supreme Court to step in and block a lower court opinion that ordered the termination of the authority. The Biden administration has said it was prepared for the authority to end and had put in place precautions to guard against confusion at the border and any potential surge of migrants.

In its order, the court also agreed to take up the states’ appeal this term. The court said it would hear arguments on the case during its argument session that begins in February 2023.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said they’d deny the application, but they did not explain their thinking. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch also dissented and explained his thinking in an order joined by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

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Gorsuch said he does “not discount the States’ concerns” about border security. But Gorsuch noted that Title 42 was put in place to combat Covid-19, and “the current border crisis is not a Covid crisis.”