Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. The Supreme Court didn't act on Steve Bannon's petition that I flagged in last week's newsletter. There isn't much to read into that lack of action thus far. The court is likely to eventually bless the Justice Department's quest to upend the Donald Trump ally's contempt conviction. We'll be tracking the petition when the justices consider it again at one of their upcoming private conferences.
With the court in between hearing sessions — it's back March 23 for a two-week stint ending with the birthright citizenship case — some of this week's news came off the bench. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Brett Kavanaugh made a joint appearance at a Washington event on Monday, where they wound up debating the court's use of the shadow docket in the Trump era. While the Trump appointee defended the court, the Biden appointee reportedly sparked "loud applause" when she said the court's intervention on the administration's behalf "is a real unfortunate problem."
The administration is seeking yet more intervention, specifically on the immigration front. Continuing a theme of Trump's second term, Solicitor General D. John Sauer complained again that lower courts are unduly interfering with executive policy, as the government seeks to end humanitarian protections for immigrants from dangerous countries around the world.
After previously securing Supreme Court orders against Venezuelan nationals, Sauer now wants the justices to give the green light to end temporary protected status, or TPS, for Syrians and Haitians. In his latest urgent appeal, Sauer said he wants the high court to not only lift lower court orders halting action against Syrians and Haitians, but he also wants the justices to take up full review of the appeals and issue definitive rulings, to, as he wrote, "break that cycle" of lower courts blocking the government's immigration policies.
Presaging this week's Jackson/Kavanaugh debate, lawyers for Syrian nationals put Sauer's dire bid for high court help in scare quotes. "The government seeks 'emergency' relief from an order that preserves the immigration status of 6,132 people who have lived here lawfully for years — in many cases more than a decade," they wrote in their March 5 opposition filing. They added that the administration "apparently needs urgent authority to send them to a country in the middle of an active war."
The justices can act any time on Sauer's Syria application, with briefing in the Haiti litigation set to wrap up early next week. If the justices are interested in taking up full review of both cases or otherwise disposing of them together, then they might wait to act in the Syria case until that latter Haiti briefing wraps up. If the court sides with the government again on this immigration issue, we could see Jackson taking the views she aired in public this week to her latest dissent.
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