The Supreme Court voted 6-3 on June 25, 2026, to allow the Trump administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for nationals of Haiti and Syria, removing a legal shield that had allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing violence and natural disasters to remain lawfully in the United States. The decision, handed down alongside a companion ruling in Mullin v. Al Otro Lado (Case No. 25-5) — a class action brought by asylum seekers and the immigration-advocacy organization Al Otro Lado against the Government — marks the Court's most consequential immigration term since Trump v. Hawaii in 2018.

The majority's disposition clears the executive branch to proceed with TPS terminations that lower courts had previously blocked. TPS is a form of humanitarian relief granted by the Secretary of Homeland Security to foreign nationals whose home countries are deemed unsafe due to armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions. It confers work authorization and protection from removal, but it does not create a pathway to permanent residence. The practical effect of the ruling is that DHS now holds the legal authority — without further court interference from these proceedings — to set termination dates and initiate removal proceedings against affected populations.

AP News reported the 6-3 alignment, consistent with the Court's current conservative supermajority. The three dissenting justices would have sustained the injunctions maintaining TPS protections. The precise statutory and constitutional grounds of the majority opinion, as released in the Court's published decision, will shape how advocates and lower courts assess the scope of DHS discretion on TPS designations going forward.

The Companion Cases and Their Stakes

Mullin v. Doe (No. 25-1083) and Mullin v. Al Otro Lado (No. 25-5) were decided together on June 25. The Al Otro Lado case was a class action — meaning its outcome binds a defined group of affected individuals, not just the named plaintiffs. Al Otro Lado is a binational legal-services organization with an established litigation posture on asylum and border policy; its inclusion as a plaintiff signals that the underlying claims were framed around systemic, not merely individual, harm.

The dual-case structure matters for practitioners. A class disposition means the government cannot relitigate TPS termination authority against individual class members who might otherwise seek separate injunctive relief. It also narrows the venues through which future legal challenges can be mounted without first distinguishing these rulings on their facts or the class definition.

The Wider Regulatory Picture

The June 25 decisions land three weeks after a separate federal district court ruling struck down a different set of Trump administration immigration policies. On June 5, 2026, a federal judge invalidated USCIS policies targeting immigrants from 39 countries, finding those policies lacked proper statutory authority. That ruling — covering a distinct legal theory and a different regulatory mechanism from TPS — remains in effect and is subject to its own appellate track.

The contrast between the two outcomes is instructive. The June 5 ruling turned on administrative law grounds: whether USCIS acted within its congressionally delegated authority. The Supreme Court's TPS ruling addresses a different statutory framework and a different level of executive discretion. Practitioners should resist reading the lower court's June 5 holding as a counterweight to the Supreme Court's June 25 decisions; the legal questions are parallel, not overlapping.

What Comes Next

DHS must now publish termination notices with effective dates for Haiti and Syria TPS holders. Affected individuals — estimates of the Haitian TPS population alone have run into the hundreds of thousands — will face a wind-down period whose length will be set by the agency. Legal advocates are likely to pursue any remaining procedural avenues: challenges to individual termination notices, motions to distinguish class membership, and legislative lobbying for a statutory fix.

Congress has the authority to codify TPS protections or create a separate legal status, but that path faces the same arithmetic it always has. Absent legislative action, the executive branch now operates with the Court's endorsement of its discretion on TPS, and the burden of any future challenge shifts to those who would argue that a specific termination decision was procedurally defective rather than constitutionally prohibited.

For immigration practitioners and policy professionals, the immediate task is auditing client portfolios for TPS exposure and monitoring DHS's Federal Register notices closely. The Court has spoken on the threshold question of authority. The operational details — timing, voluntary departure windows, humanitarian exemptions — are now entirely within DHS's hands.