The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s request to end temporary legal protections the Biden administration extended for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans. 

It marks the second time the justices have intervened on their emergency docket to lift a ruling from U.S. District Judge Edward Chen keeping Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in place for some 600,000 Venezuelans.

“Although the posture of the case has changed, the parties’ legal arguments and relative harms generally have not. The same result that we reached in May is appropriate here,” the court’s unsigned order reads. 

The ruling appeared to fall along the court’s 6-3 ideological lines, though the justices don’t have to disclose their votes in emergency cases. 

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan both publicly dissented but did not explain their reasoning. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the most junior of the three liberal justices, in a solo dissent called it a “grave misuse of our emergency docket.” 

“We once again use our equitable power (but not our opinion-writing capacity) to allow this Administration to disrupt as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible,” Jackson wrote. 

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals as recently as August upheld Chen’s ruling, barring the Trump administration from beginning to deport Venezuelans with TPS after determining they unlawfully axed the protection.

Days after taking office, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem purported to vacate TPS protections for Venezuelans, saying she would not allow the Biden administration “to tie our hands.”

The appeals court sided with TPS holders in determining Noem did not have the power to vacate their protections.

“We hold that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim that the vacatur of a prior extension of TPS is not permitted by the governing statutory framework. In enacting the TPS statute, Congress designed a system of temporary status that was predictable, dependable, and insulated from electoral politics,” the panel wrote.

“A reading of the statute that allows for vacatur would render these terms—and Congress’s design—meaningless,” the court said, adding that TPS holders “have demonstrated that they face irreparable harm to their lives, families, and livelihood” if their protections are stripped.

Chen previously blocked Noem’s vacatur from taking effect in April, writing that her decision “smacks of racism” after it made a series of demeaning comments about Venezuelans. 

“Generalization of criminality to the Venezuelan TPS population as a whole is baseless and smacks of racism predicated on generalized false stereotypes,” he wrote at the time.

TPS can be awarded to those from countries where natural disasters or civil unrest make it too dangerous to facilitate deportations.

The ruling noted the Biden administration started TPS for the country as Venezuela “experienced the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory.” Millions have fled the country amid political instability and food shortages.

In the wake of the 9th Circuit ruling, Noem again moved to strip TPS protections by following the process for doing so, posting in the federal register and giving recipients 60 days notice their status may be terminated.

Updated: 5:10 p.m.