The Trump administration notched another major win at the appellate level on Monday, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit stepped in to halt yet another bout of lower-court activism.
In a decisive move, the Ninth Circuit issued a stay of a district court ruling that had vacated Kristi Noem’s termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Nepal, Honduras, and Nicaragua — a ruling that, if left standing, would have forced the administration to continue a policy Congress never intended to be permanent.
The procedural maze around TPS litigation has become deliberately convoluted, but the facts here are straightforward. In the summer of 2025, Secretary Noem ended TPS designations for the three countries, determining that the statutory conditions justifying the program no longer applied. Activist groups promptly sued to block the move.
In late December, Judge Trina Thompson of the Northern District of California sided with the plaintiffs, declaring that Noem’s decisions violated the Administrative Procedure Act and vacating the terminations outright — a familiar maneuver from a judiciary increasingly comfortable substituting its preferences for executive authority.
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The administration appealed, and the Ninth Circuit didn’t just pause the lower court’s ruling. By granting a stay pending appeal, it struck at the core logic underpinning a host of similar TPS decisions, signaling that the district court’s reasoning may not survive higher-level scrutiny:
We conclude that the government is likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal either by showing that the district court lacked jurisdiction or by prevailing on plaintiffs’ arbitrary-and-capricious APA challenge.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem weighed in:
A win for the rule of law and vindication for the US Constitution. Under the previous administration, Temporary Protected Status was abused to allow violent terrorists, criminals, and national security threats into our nation.
TPS was never designed to be permanent, yet previous administrations have used it as a de facto amnesty program for decades.
Given the improved situation in each of these countries, we are wisely concluding what was intended to be a temporary designation.
A win for the rule of law and vindication for the US Constitution. Under the previous administration, Temporary Protected Status was abused to allow violent terrorists, criminals, and national security threats into our nation.
TPS was never designed to be permanent, yet… pic.twitter.com/SZhVNuhU1n
— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) February 9, 2026
The Ninth Circuit appeals court didn’t just hit pause — it drew a critical legal line the lower court refused to acknowledge.
In its ruling, the Ninth Circuit carefully distinguished this case, which involves the termination of Temporary Protected Status, from a separate, recent case where Noem was found to have exceeded her authority by vacating a TPS designation. The difference matters. Under the governing statute, the DHS secretary has explicit authority to terminate TPS — she just cannot retroactively erase it as if it never existed.
In plain English: Congress gave the executive branch the power to end TPS when conditions no longer justify it. That’s exactly what Noem did here.
The panel also signaled serious trouble for the plaintiffs’ Administrative Procedure Act theory, finding it likely the administration will prevail on the merits. One judge, Michael Hawkins — a Clinton appointee — said he didn’t think it was necessary to even reach the APA analysis, though he still agreed the stay was warranted. The other two judges, Consuelo Callahan and Eric Miller, appointed by George W. Bush and Donald Trump respectively, had no such hesitation.
Perhaps most telling, the court explicitly pointed to recent Supreme Court stays in related TPS cases as further justification — a not-so-subtle reminder that the higher courts are increasingly skeptical of district judges using the APA as a blunt instrument to override immigration policy:
We are not writing on a blank slate, however, because the Supreme Court has twice stayed district court orders blocking the Secretary’s vacatur of TPS for Venezuela. See Noem v. National TPS All., 146 S. Ct. 23 (2025); Noem v. National TPS All., 145 S. Ct. 2728 (2025). Those orders contained no reasoning, so they do not inform our analysis of the legal issues in this case, and the issues in any event are not identical. But the stay applications involved similar assertions of harm by both parties, and we have been admonished that the Court’s stay orders must inform “how [we] should exercise [our] equitable discretion in like cases.” Trump v. Boyle, 145 S. Ct. 2653, 2654 (2025). We therefore conclude that the equitable factors favor a stay.
Plaintiffs can certainly request a rehearing en banc, and there is also the possibility of appealing to the Supreme Court. However, if they are counting on a favorable outcome from SCOTUS, they might find themselves in a tough spot.
