Three cities and a legal-aid group asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause an agreement between Texas and the Department of Justice that wiped out a 2024 regulation allowing immigration judges to suspend certain deportation proceedings. The challengers, who filed their application after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit refused to intervene, describe the agreement as the product of "egregious collusion."

The dispute centers on a rule the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a DOJ component, adopted in 2024 through notice-and-comment rulemaking. The rule provides what immigration practitioners know as "administrative closure" — a mechanism that lets immigration judges pause deportation proceedings, for instance when a crime victim or witness is pursuing asylum or another form of relief. If the justices grant the request, the rule returns to force temporarily while the challengers' appeal proceeds in the lower courts.

How did a single judge end a federal rule?

The procedural path matters here. In 2026, Texas sued in the Wichita Falls division of the Northern District of Texas, arguing the EOIR lacked authority to adopt the administrative-closure rule at all. The case landed before the only federal judge in that division, Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor.

What happened next was unusually fast. Within hours of the filing, both the DOJ and Texas moved for a final judgment in the state's favor. The federal government also asked O'Connor to vacate the rule outright and to bar the EOIR from adopting anything similar in the future. O'Connor granted every request.

The cities — Baltimore, Maryland; New Haven, Connecticut; and Columbus, Ohio — together with Centro Legal de la Raza, a provider of legal services to immigrants, then sought to join the case on appeal to defend the rule. O'Connor denied them, holding they lacked standing. He specifically rejected the cities' argument that eliminating the rule would cost them money because their taxpayers face likely deportation.

The 5th Circuit declined to block the consent judgment and reinstate the rule during the appeal. That refusal brought the challengers to the Supreme Court.

What does the filing actually argue?

Joshua Salzman of Democracy Forward, counsel for the challengers, called the consent judgment "indefensible." His brief is blunt about the stakes beyond immigration law.

"If a judgment procured through such open collusion is allowed to remain in effect," Salzman wrote, "any agency can avoid the strictures of the" federal law governing administrative agencies "by advertising its unwillingness to defend a disfavored regulation and by immediately acquiescing to nationwide relief."

Salzman also pressed a question the Court has sidestepped before. Five years ago, he noted, the justices granted review on whether states may intervene to defend a rule when the federal government declines to do so — then dismissed the case in June 2022 without reaching the merits. "There is a substantial continuing need," he argued, "for this Court to address whether litigation tactics can be substituted for the … requirement that a federal regulation adopted through notice-and-comment rulemaking may be rescinded only through notice-and-comment rulemaking."

What is at stake for practitioners?

The filing raises a structural question, not merely an immigration one. If a federal agency can partner with a friendly plaintiff, secure a same-day consent judgment before a single chosen judge, and thereby rescind a regulation enacted through the formal rulemaking process, the notice-and-comment requirements of administrative law become optional in practice. That prospect cuts across practice areas — environmental rules, labor standards, financial regulations — wherever an agency prefers surrender to defense.

For immigration practitioners, the immediate consequences are concrete. Without administrative closure, judges lose a docket tool used when an applicant has a pending relief claim, such as asylum by a crime victim or witness. Proceedings that would have been paused will instead run to completion, with removal orders following in cases where relief might ultimately have been granted. The three challenger cities, all with substantial immigrant populations, put the harm in fiscal terms; O'Connor found that theory insufficient for standing.

The Court has not indicated when it will act on the request. Neither Texas nor the DOJ has yet filed a response on the merits of the stay application, and nothing in the record suggests the justices feel urgency. A grant would restore the rule temporarily; a denial would leave the consent judgment in place while the appeal continues.

The core question, in plain words: can an agency end a properly adopted regulation through a lawsuit it agreed to lose, or only through the rulemaking process the law requires?

By Priya Raman, Global Law Wire