DOJ asks Supreme Court to toss case to maintain Title 42

The Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to toss out a case difficult the Biden administration’s decision to finish Title 42, a Trump-era immigration policy affecting asylum seekers.

The DOJ, in a filing late Tuesday, told the Supreme Court that the administration’s move to finish the Covid-19 public emergency on May 11 “would render this case moot.”

That’s since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order regarding Title 42 says the policy should end when the secretary of Health and Human Services’s declaration of a public health emergency from the pandemic expires.

The case, set to be argued on March 1 on the court, challenges the Biden administration’s plan to finish Title 42, which allowed the US to quickly deport migrants searching for asylum.

Title 42 had been implemented in March 2020 attributable to the Covid pandemic. Adopted under former President Donald Trump, it allowed the U.S. besides greater than 2 million migrants, most of them on the Mexican border.

In a case brought by asylum seekers attempting to overturn Title 42, a federal judge ruled in November that the policy violated federal law and was “arbitrary and capricious.”

A bunch of Republican state attorneys general have asked to intervene within the case to defend Title 42.

The Supreme Court in December ordered the policy to stay in place because it considered whether the states have the legal standing to sue over Title 42.

In its filing Tuesday, lawyers for the DOJ wrote, that query will not be “a live case or controversy” due to automatic expiration of Title 42 that may occur once the general public health emergency ends.

“The federal government has also recently announced its intent to adopt latest Title 8 policies to deal with the situation on the border once the Title 42 orders end,” the filing said.