(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court has acted in a series of cases involving challenges to executive orders signed by President Donald Trump and actions by his administration since he returned to office in January. The cases have involved deportations, Trump’s move to restrict automatic birthright citizenship, firings of federal workers and certain agency officials, cuts to teacher training grants and payments to foreign aid organizations.
Here is a look at these cases.
DEPORTATION OF VENEZUELANS
The court on April 19 temporarily barred Trump’s administration from deporting Venezuelan men in immigration custody after their lawyers said they were at imminent risk of removal without the judicial review previously mandated by the justices. The administration has described the Venezuelans as members of the Tren de Aragua criminal gang, which the State Department as designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Family members and lawyers for the migrants have disputed this allegation.
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union had filed urgent requests in multiple courts, including the Supreme Court, urging immediate action after reporting that some of the men were loaded onto buses and told they would be deported. The ACLU said the rapid developments meant the administration was poised to deport the men using a 1798 law called the Alien Enemies Act that historically has been employed only in wartime without affording them a realistic opportunity to contest their removal – as the Supreme Court had previously required. Trump invoked the law as part of his hardline approach to immigration.
The Supreme Court on April 7 issued a decision allowing the administration to remove Venezuelan migrants under the Alien Enemies Act but specified that “notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” Habeas corpus relief refers to the right of detainees to challenge the legality of their detention. It is considered a bedrock right under U.S. law.
WRONGLY DEPORTED SALVADORAN MAN
The court on April 10 directed Trump’s administration to facilitate the return to the United States of a Salvadoran man who the U.S. government has acknowledged was deported in error to El Salvador. The Justice Department had asked the justices to throw out an April 4 order by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis requiring the administration to “facilitate and effectuate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Xinis had issued the order in response to a lawsuit by Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who was living in Maryland and has had a work permit since 2019, and his family challenging the legality of his deportation.
The court said that the judge’s order “properly requires the government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.” While siding with Abrego Garcia, the court told Xinis to clarify the order’s requirement to “effectuate” his return “with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”
Abrego Garcia was stopped and detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on March 12 and questioned about alleged affiliation with the criminal gang MS-13, which the State Department has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. His lawyers have denied the alleged gang affiliation. He was deported on March 15 on one of three deportation flights to El Salvador that also included Venezuelan migrants. El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, said during a meeting with Trump on April 14 that he had no plans to return Abrego Garcia to the United States.
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP
The court decided to hear arguments on May 15 over Trump’s bid to broadly enforce his executive order to restrict automatic birthright citizenship, a key pillar of his hardline approach toward immigration. The justices did not immediately act on a request by Trump’s administration to narrow the scope of three nationwide injunctions issued by federal judges that halted his executive order while the matter is litigated.
Trump’s order directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident. In a series of lawsuits, plaintiffs including Democratic state attorneys general, immigrant rights advocates and some expectant mothers argued that Trump’s order violates a right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, that provides that anyone born in the United States is a citizen.
LABOR BOARD OFFICIALS
The court on April 9 cleared the way for Trump to remove Democratic members of two federal labor boards for the time being, putting on hold a pair of judicial orders that had shielded them from dismissal. The court halted the orders by two federal judges that blocked Trump’s firing of Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board and Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board before their terms expire. The court’s action, called an administrative stay, gave it additional time to consider the administration’s formal request to block the judges’ orders while litigation over the firings continues.
The legal fight over these firings has emerged as a test of Trump’s efforts to bring federal agencies meant by Congress to be independent from the president under his control. A 1935 Supreme Court precedent in a case called Humphrey’s Executor v. United States has protected commissioners at independent federal agencies from being fired at will by presidents.
TEACHER TRAINING GRANTS
The court on April 4 allowed Trump’s administration to proceed with millions of dollars of cuts to teacher training grants – part of his crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The court put on hold U.S. District Judge Myong Joun’s March 10 order requiring the Department of Education to reinstate in eight Democratic-led states funding for grants under two teacher training programs while a legal challenge by the states continues. The court said that the administration is “likely to succeed in showing the district court lacked jurisdiction to order the payment of money,” as occurred in this case.
The states sued after the Department of Education announced that it had cut $600 million in teacher training funds that were promoting what it called “divisive ideologies” including diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, or DEI.
The Teacher Quality Partnership and Supporting Effective Educator grant programs were established to help support institutions that recruit and train educators in a bid to address critical teacher shortages, especially in rural and underserved communities.
PAYMENT TO FOREIGN AID GROUPS
The court on March 5 declined to let Trump’s administration withhold payment to foreign aid organizations for work they already performed for the government as the president moves to pull the plug on American humanitarian projects around the world. The court upheld U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order that had called on the administration to promptly release funding to contractors and recipients of grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department for their past work.
Aid organizations accused Trump in lawsuits of exceeding his authority under federal law and the U.S. Constitution by effectively dismantling an independent federal agency in USAID and canceling spending authorized by Congress.
FIRED FEDERAL EMPLOYEES
The court on April 8 blocked a judge’s order for Trump’s administration to rehire thousands of fired employees, acting in one dispute over his efforts to slash the federal workforce and dismantle parts of the government. The court put on hold U.S. Judge William Alsup’s March 13 injunction requiring six federal agencies to reinstate thousands of recently hired probationary employees while litigation challenging the legality of the dismissals continues. Alsup’s ruling applied to probationary employees at the U.S. Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Treasury. Probationary workers typically have less than a year of service in their current roles, though some are longtime federal employees in serving new roles.
FIRED WATCHDOG AGENCY HEAD
The court on February 21 declined to let Trump immediately fire the head of a federal watchdog agency after a judge’s order had temporarily blocked the president from ousting the official. The court postponed action on the Justice Department’s request to lift U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s February 12 order that had temporarily blocked Trump’s removal of Hampton Dellinger as head of the Office of Special Counsel while litigation continued in the dispute. Dellinger on March 6 ended his legal challenge to his firing after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit allowed Trump’s action to stand. The independent agency protects government whistleblowers.
(Compiled by John Kruzel in Washington and Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
