Why the Court Block on Ethiopia TPS Termination May Not Hold

For anyone tracking the 2026 court block of Ethiopia TPS termination, the immediate compliance answer is narrower than the headline. As of July 27, 2026, the April 8 stay has not been dissolved. But the operative employment-verification date employers are being told to use is July 30, 2026, with Form I-9 Section 1 reflecting “as per court order” and Section 2 and E-Verify using the July 30 placeholder date for covered Ethiopia TPS-related EADs. Last verified: July 27, 2026, UTC; USCIS has been updating this posture on a rolling Friday cadence, so the date must be checked again before anyone gives payroll or onboarding advice. [1][2]

That split—court protection still formally alive, document dates still moving week by week—is the point. A district-court stay can keep a termination from taking effect, while agency systems still prepare employers for a near-term change if the legal basis for that stay is expected to fail. The Ethiopia stay now sits in exactly that uncomfortable space.

The April stay still matters, but it is no longer the controlling risk fact

On April 8, 2026, Judge Brian E. Murphy in the District of Massachusetts postponed DHS’s termination of TPS for Ethiopia in African Communities Together v. Noem. The order rested heavily on the plaintiffs’ argument that DHS failed to satisfy the statutory consultation obligation before terminating the designation. Judge Murphy also found that the termination appeared pretextual and wrote that “Presidential whims do not and cannot supplant agencies’ statutory obligations.” [3]

That order explains why Ethiopian TPS holders still have a live protection today. It does not answer whether that protection is durable after June 25, 2026, when the Supreme Court decided Mullin v. Doe. The practical problem is not that the April order vanished. It is that the principal legal theory supporting it now collides with the Supreme Court’s reading of the TPS statute.

The scale is not abstract. DHS’s termination notice estimated about 5,001 approved Ethiopia TPS beneficiaries and 263 pending applications affected by the termination decision, though those figures came from the 2025 notice and may not match the exact population still exposed in late July 2026. [4]

Why Mullin cuts directly at the Ethiopia plaintiffs’ strongest claim

Mullin did not decide the Ethiopia case. It addressed TPS litigation involving Haiti and Syria. Nor has the Massachusetts district court, on the materials available as of July 27, ruled on a case-specific government motion dissolving the Ethiopia stay under Mullin. Those limits matter.

But the statutory holding in Mullin is broad enough to matter immediately. The Supreme Court held that 8 U.S.C. § 1254a(b)(5)(A) bars judicial review of non-constitutional claims challenging TPS termination decisions. The CRS Legal Sidebar published after Mullin describes the decision as foreclosing all non-constitutional challenges to TPS termination determinations under that provision. [5]

That is the mismatch for Ethiopia. The April order found serious force in an APA theory based on DHS’s alleged failure to consult “appropriate agencies” before terminating TPS for Ethiopia. However strong that argument may have looked before Mullin, it is still a statutory and administrative-law claim. It is not a constitutional claim. Under Mullin’s reading of § 1254a(b)(5)(A), that kind of claim is the category courts generally may not review when it challenges a TPS termination.

This is why a simple statement that “the Ethiopia termination remains blocked” is accurate but incomplete. The stay remains operative until the district court changes it or another controlling event does. Yet the claim that did the most work in obtaining the stay is now the type of claim Mullin says the statute bars from judicial review.

The equal protection claim survives the jurisdictional bar, not necessarily the merits problem

The Ethiopia plaintiffs are not left with no theory at all. A Fifth Amendment equal protection claim is constitutional, and Mullin’s jurisdictional holding was about non-constitutional claims. That distinction keeps the constitutional claim outside the statutory bar that defeats the APA consultation theory.

Survival at the jurisdictional threshold, however, should not be mistaken for a strong likelihood of success. The Mullin majority described an analogous equal protection claim in Miot as “likely to fail.” [5] That language was not a merits ruling in the Ethiopia case, and the Ethiopia plaintiffs may argue that their record is different. Still, it is a poor substitute for the now-vulnerable APA claim if the question is whether the April stay can remain in place on a stable foundation.

For compliance purposes, this is the distinction that matters most: the constitutional claim may keep the courthouse door open, but it may not provide enough support to keep the injunction in force. The district court could maintain relief on a surviving constitutional basis, but that is not the same as saying the current stay is secure.

USCIS’s Friday notices are not court orders, but they are not noise

The operational signal from USCIS has become sharper since Mullin. USCIS issued Ethiopia TPS-related supersession notices on three consecutive Fridays: July 10, July 17, and July 24, 2026. The notices framed the EAD treatment as “limited relief” and tied that relief to the period “until” the District of Massachusetts aligns with the Supreme Court’s favorable decision in Mullin v. Doe. [1][2][6]

That language should be read carefully. It does not mean DHS has already ended the stay. It does not mean the district court has already acted. It does show that DHS is telling employers, benefit-verification users, and E-Verify participants to expect a short horizon, not an open-ended extension.

The cadence is the tell. A one-time bulletin after a Supreme Court decision might simply clean up agency instructions. Three Friday supersessions, each preserving only a near-term placeholder while repeating the expectation that the district court will align with Mullin, look more like system preparation for a rapid change. That is still an agency signal, not a judicial ruling. But HR teams and immigration counsel cannot responsibly treat it as routine background language.

Why the usual EAD cushion may not solve the problem

In many TPS compliance reviews, counsel would ask whether automatic EAD extensions provide a buffer if litigation moves faster than agency card production. That cushion is thinner here. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted July 22, 2025, capped TPS EAD auto-extensions at one year, and DHS later issued an interim final rule eliminating auto-extensions for new renewal filers. [7]

That does not mean every Ethiopian TPS-dependent employee loses work authorization on the same day. Individual documents, renewal histories, and verification records still have to be reviewed. It does mean employers should not assume that an old automatic-extension rule will absorb the shock if the district court dissolves or narrows relief.

How to classify the risk as of July 27

The Ethiopia TPS stay should be treated as highly precarious, not already gone. That classification keeps the legal and HR columns separate.

• Legally, the April 8 stay remains operative unless and until the district court modifies, dissolves, or replaces it, or another controlling order changes the posture.
• Doctrinally, the principal APA consultation theory identified in the April order is now exposed because Mullin bars non-constitutional TPS termination challenges under § 1254a(b)(5)(A).
• Procedurally, the Ethiopia court has not yet entered a post-Mullin order dissolving the stay on the materials available here.
• Operationally, USCIS is using short, rolling EAD dates and “limited relief” language that points toward expected near-term alignment with Mullin.
• For employers, the live risk is imminent loss of work authorization if the stay falls and no replacement extension or surviving constitutional injunction preserves the current EAD treatment.

The safest briefing sentence is therefore bounded: the Ethiopia TPS termination remains blocked today, but the stay’s strongest legal support has been weakened by Mullin, and USCIS’s weekly supersession pattern indicates that DHS expects a fast operational change if the Massachusetts court aligns with the Supreme Court.

Before advising an employer, employee, or business unit, check three sources in this order: the District of Massachusetts docket in African Communities Together v. Noem, the current USCIS I-9 Central and SAVE Ethiopia TPS updates, and the EAD date actually being used in Section 2 and E-Verify on the day of the advice.

References

1. Update on Termination of Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopia; Release: July 17, 2026, USCIS I-9 Central, July 17, 2026, link
2. Update on Termination of Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopia; Release: July 10, 2026, USCIS SAVE, July 10, 2026, link
3. Court Blocks Trump Administration from Terminating TPS for Ethiopians, Muslim Advocates, April 9, 2026, link
4. Termination of the Designation of Ethiopia for Temporary Protected Status, Federal Register, December 12, 2025, link
5. Supreme Court Holds TPS Termination Decisions Generally Are Not Subject to Judicial Review, EveryCRSReport.com, July 10, 2026, link
6. Update on Termination of Temporary Protected Status for Ethiopia; Release: July 24, 2026, USCIS I-9 Central, July 24, 2026, link
7. Temporary Protected Status Employment Authorization Document Automatic Extension Rule, USCIS, October 30, 2025, link