Much attention has been focused on the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and held that there is no Constitutionally-guaranteed right to an abortion. However, in cases that the Court decided with much less fanfare, we learned that removal of existing rights did not stop there. In particular, two recent decision have taken recognized rights away from immigrants and made their place in the U.S. more precarious.
 
In Patel v. Garland, decided on May 16, 2022, the Court ruled by a 5-4 margin that non-U.S. Citizens who are present in the U.S. – i.e., immigrants – may no longer challenge in court adverse rulings by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or the Department of Justice, where such rulings involved the refusal to grant discretionary relief from deportation. Two elements of this case were particularly striking.
 
First, both the Plaintiff, Mr. Patel, and the Defendant, U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, agreed that courts should be able to review such rulings. Not satisfied with that, the Court’s majority asked an obscure lawyer with ties to the Trump administration and campaign to write an amicus brief. That brief became the foundation of the majority’s opinion.
 
Second, the dissenting opinion was authored by Trump appointee, Neil Gorsuch, who rarely breaks with his conservative colleagues. Justice Gorsuch opined that the ruling in Patel v. Garland will have “dire consequences” by making judicial review of certain immigration decisions unavailable even when those decisions were based on “glaring errors.”
 
In Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez, decided on June 13, a 6-3 majority held that federal district courts lack jurisdiction to enter injunctive relief for the benefit of classes immigrants – as opposed to individual immigrants. The strategy of filing class action lawsuits seeking injunctive relief in the lower federal courts was crucial to blocking and delaying some of the most egregious anti-immigrant measures adopted by the Trump administration, such as the Muslim Travel Ban and the “public charge rule” that required would-be immigrants to make showings of financial stability that would be impossible for numerous American citizens to make.
 
Given the current make up of the Supreme Court, we can expect further decision limiting immigrants’ rights in the upcoming months.