Arizona v. Mayorkas

Title 42 of the Public Health Services Act authorizes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to bar the entry of individuals into the United States to protect the public from contagious diseases, even if those individuals otherwise would be eligible to apply for asylum. The Trump administration relied on this title to suspend the entry of migrants at the Mexico and Canada borders at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Biden administration initially extended the policy, but then announced that it would end it. However, a federal judge in Louisiana concluded that the Biden administration had not followed proper procedures and ordered the administration to keep the policy in place. Separately, a federal judge in D.C. ruled that the policy was illegal and ordered the Biden administration to end it. Several states with Republican attorneys general tried to intervene in the D.C. case to defend the policy. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected the states’ applications to intervene. When it granted review as to the question whether the states could intervene, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the states’ request to put the ruling on hold.