Federal judge blocks Trump’s move to end Ethiopia TPS protections

A federal judge appointed by Biden on Friday became the second lawyer in Massachusetts to block the Trump administration’s efforts to end Temporary Protected Status for immigrant groups, fueling a growing conflict over whether lower courts are ignoring a recent Supreme Court decision that narrows their authority over such decisions.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy of the District of Massachusetts ruled in African Communities Together v. By issuing an administrative stay in the Mullin case, temporarily preserving TPS protections for Ethiopian citizens, the court is considering whether plaintiffs can assert constitutional claims in light of the Supreme Court’s June decision. Mullin v. In its 6-3 decision in Doe, the Supreme Court significantly narrowed lower courts’ authority to block DHS decisions establishing or terminating TPS.

Murphy’s decision drew a swift response from DHS General Counsel James Percival, who accused him of “rebellion” against the Supreme Court and renewed criticism of the judge’s decision to halt a May 2025 deportation flight to South Sudan. DHS accused Murphy of trapping ICE officers at a U.S. military base in Djibouti; officials there said they faced the threat of exposure to malaria and rocket attacks from terrorist groups in neighboring Yemen.

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Percival wrote to “Fun fact: it was Judge Brian Murphy himself who issued an unlawful TPS order today!”

Murphy’s order Friday comes amid a months-long legal battle over the Trump administration’s effort to end Ethiopia’s TPS designation.

The case began after then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem determined in December 2025 that conditions in Ethiopia no longer justified Temporary Protected Status and announced that the designation would end. According to the department’s notice, Ethiopia’s TPS designation was to expire following a 60-day winding-up period, ending on February 13, 2026, before Judge Brian Murphy’s intervention.

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U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions from the media during a bilateral meeting with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the Oval Office of the White House on July 21, 2026 in Washington, DC. U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris attends the opening ceremony of the Judge Stephen G. Breyer Community Learning Center on Courts and the Constitution at the federal courthouse in Boston, Massachusetts, USA on March 25, 2025. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images; Brian Snyder/Reuters)

Earlier this year, Murphy sided with opponents and granted DHS’s motion to delay terminating Ethiopia’s TPS designation amid allegations the department failed to follow procedures Congress established to end TPS.

However, on June 25, the Supreme Court ruled in Mullin v. In Doe, the case was overturned after lower courts ruled that the Administrative Procedure Act generally could not hear challenges to DHS decisions establishing or terminating TPS. Because the Administrative Procedure Act formed the legal backbone of the plaintiffs’ challenge, the Trump administration argued that Murphy’s injunction was weakened and should be struck down.

But the Supreme Court left open whether the constitutional claims could survive, leading the plaintiffs to revise their complaint to focus on those claims.

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Murphy’s decision came just hours after Senior U.S. District Judge Patti Saris, another judge in the District of Massachusetts, temporarily halted the Trump administration’s effort to end TPS for South Sudan. Saris issued an administrative stay that maintains the protections while the plaintiffs consider whether they can amend their case following the Supreme Court’s decision. Like the Ethiopian case, the South Sudan issue was raised by the Union of African Communities as well as by individual TPS holders.

Saris said his decision was only intended to temporarily maintain the status quo while the court considered the case and was “not a decision on the merits.”

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection sign is displayed at U.S. Customs and Border Protection Headquarters in Washington, D.C., on May 18, 2025. (Kevin Carter/Getty Images)

The tandem rulings led to calls for the Trump administration to ignore the lower courts’ decision.

Conservative legal activist and III. Substance Project founder Mike Davis wrote of X: “These robed Democratic operatives don’t have the power to do this.” “The Supreme Court has made that clear. So it’s time to ignore these clearly unlawful orders.”

Ann Coulter, a conservative political commentator, wrote of

Murphy has repeatedly clashed with the Supreme Court over the Trump administration’s immigration policies; The justices twice sided with the administration in challenging its orders restricting the deportation of illegal aliens to countries that are not their home countries.

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The Biden administration first granted Temporary Protected Status to Ethiopians in 2022, declaring that war and a worsening humanitarian crisis made it unsafe for them to be repatriated. Then-DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas cited ongoing armed conflict, widespread violence, human rights violations and food insecurity, among many reasons, as the basis for the designation. The protections went into effect on December 12, 2022 and were later extended until December 12, 2025. DHS estimates that approximately 26,700 Ethiopian citizens living in the United States may qualify for TPS.

Fox News Digital has reached out to African Communities Together for comment.