The Biden administration is appealing a judge’s ruling against the Title 42 border expulsion policy, which the Trump administration instituted during the coronavirus pandemic and the Biden administration continued on a more limited basis over the past nearly two years.
“The government respectfully disagrees with this Court’s decision and would argue on appeal, as it has argued in this Court, that CDC’s Title 42 Orders were lawful,” Justice Department attorneys said in a notice filed Wednesday announcing the appeal.
The administration’s strategy is to ask the D.C. Circuit Court to pause the appeal until the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit in Louisiana has decided on a separate case involving Title 42—a process that could take months and perhaps more than a year.
The Trump administration used provisions in Title 42 of the U.S. Code to rapidly expel migrants at the border on the grounds of health concerns when the pandemic first began, although critics said the public health benefits were dubious.
D.C.-based U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan blocked the use of Title 42 in mid-November, stating that it didn’t match the stage of the pandemic the country was in since vaccines and treatments had become widely available and travel within the country increased.
The Justice Department asked for a five-week delay in order to have time to transition away from Title 42, pushing the order’s start date to Dec. 21. Sullivan granted the delay with the consent of lawyers for asylum seekers who challenged the policy.
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