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By Andrew Stanton
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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch joined liberal justices in dissenting from the majority opinion in an immigration case handed down on Thursday.
Why It Matters
President Donald Trump's immigration policy and mass deportations have faced legal challenges, with the Supreme Court playing referee on whether many of these policies can stand. On Thursday, the court made a ruling on the case Riley v. Bondi, one of its final rulings of the term.
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What to Know
The case centers around Pierre Riley, a man from Jamaica facing deportation from the United States who had been convicted on drug charges in 2008. After his release in 2021, immigration authorities took him into custody and sought his removal under a final administrative removal order (FARO).
Riley did not contest his removal from the U.S. but said he should not be returned to Jamaica under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), citing concerns he could be killed by a drug kingpin if he were sent back to Jamaica.
An immigration judge sent his case to a "withholding-only proceeding," which decided whether he could be removed to his home country. During that proceeding, a judge granted deferral of his removal to Jamaica over those concerns.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which opted to enforce the earlier removal order. He petitioned to appeal the order three days later—but the Fourth Circuit found that the petition came more than 30 days after the original order.
The court was asked to weigh in on whether Riley's petition "was filed on time because it was filed within 30 days of the BIA order," or if it needed to be filed within 30 days of the original FARO. A second question also focused on whether the 30-day deadline is "jurisdictional."
A majority of justices determined the FARO, not the BIA ruling, was not the final order of removal.
"The statutory text and our precedents make clear that the FARO is the final order of removal in this case, and withholding-only proceedings do not disturb the finality of an otherwise final order of removal," the Court wrote in the majority opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito.
However, Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, joined the three liberal justices in dissenting from the case. The dissent was written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and argued that the removal order did not become final until after the Board of Immigration rejected his CAT appeal.
"The question is when Riley should have petitioned for judicial review of the Board's order," the dissent reads. "Was his petition due 30 days after the Government first notified him he would be deported, well over a year before the Board issued the order Riley sought to challenge? Or was it instead due 30 days after the order denying his claim for deferral of removal? The answer is clear: One should not be required to appeal an order before it exists."
Sotomayor wrote that the majority's opinion rendered the statute in question "incoherent," writing that they held he "should have appealed the order one year and three months before the Board entered it."
The dissent noted the result of the ruling could be that "noncitizens facing expedited removal will be forced to file immediate appeals of their removal orders in every case, simply to protect their right to judicial review in the event they lose
their ongoing withholding-only proceedings."
Notably, Gorsuch did not join part of the dissent in which Sotomayor warned of "untold damage to basic principles of finality and judicial review."
On the other hand, justices all agreed on the second question that the 30-day deadline is not jurisdictional but merely a claims-processing rule.
What People Are Saying
Sotomayor wrote in the dissent: "Perhaps the idea is that noncitizens may seek judicial review of their CAT claims only if, by luck or happenstance, they also have a challenge to the underlying order of removal. The majority's finality rule, however, prevents CAT appeals even under those circumstances. After all, courts will likely finish reviewing the removal order before the Board ever hears the associated CAT claim."
Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, wrote: "Riley has undoubtedly received a final order of removal. But, he has never sought judicial review of that order pursuant to the procedures outlined in §1252. This Court has held that 'CAT orders may be reviewed together with final orders of removal in a court of appeals.' Id., at 581 (emphasis added). But, as far as I am aware, we have never held that judicial review of CAT orders is available when an alien does not petition for review of a final order of removal."
What Happens Next
The Supreme Court is set to release the final decisions of its current term on Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts announced from the bench Thursday. Among the six remaining cases is a high-stakes challenge over whether President Donald Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship can be implemented nationwide.
Other closely watched rulings include a dispute involving Maryland parents seeking to exempt their children from school lessons featuring LGBTQ storybooks due to religious objections, and a redistricting battle over the creation of a second majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana.
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