Court to review asylum-seeker policy
Justices refuse to hear appeal on prayer at high school football games
By: Maureen Groppe
and Aysha Bagchi
USA Today
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court will decide whether the federal government can turn asylum-seekers away at the U.S. -Mexico border if too many migrants want the chance to apply.
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The court known as "metering," which has been used by both Democratic and Republican administrations.
..... The Justice Department said the practice is a critical tool when there are surges of prole at the border; however, lower courts said federal law allows migrants to seek assistance once they've reached U.S. territory.
..... Thirteen asylum-seekers and the immigrant rights group Al Otro Lado, Spanish for "on the other side' or "across," challenged the practice in 2017 on behalf of migrants who were turned back to Mexico. Their lawyers said in a November 17 [2025] statement that turning asylum-seekers back at the border was an "illegal scheme."
..... "vulnerable families, children, and adults fleeing persecution where they face violent assault, kidnapping, and death," the lawyers said.
..... The Justice Department didn't immediately respond to USA Today;s request for comment.
..... The 1986 Mitigation and Nationality act allows anyone "who is physically present in the United States" to apply for asylum.
..... The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the best way to interpret "arrives in" is that it doesn't mean the same thing as "physically present," which would be redundant.
..... Instead the term :encompasses those who encounter officials at the border, whichever side of the border they are standing on," a divided panel of judges said.
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Otherwise, the court said, the law gives migrants an incentive to try to circumvent border crossings, something Congress likely did not intend.
..... The Justice department argues that interpretation defies the plain text of the law.
..... "In ordinary English, a person "arrives in; a country only when he comes within its brooder," the government said in its appeal.
..... The practice of not letting a potential asylum seeker cross through a checkpoint was used periodically during former President Barack Obama's administration, when border officers began turning away hundreds of Haitian asylum-seekers at ports of entry in California. Customs and Border Protection officers could stop undocumented migrants from physically setting foot on U.S. soil whenever they considered a border crossing too busy.
..... The policy was formalized during the first Trump administration rolled back the formal policy, but allowed exceptions.
..... The current Trump administration told the Supreme Court it wants to options to formally revive the practice.
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Managing the nation's 1,900-mile border with Mexico is daunting even without surges of migrants that have repeatedly recurred in recent years, the Justice Department said in its filing.
..... A district judge and the appeals court sided with the asylum-seekers.
..... Lawyers for the migrants said the Supreme Court should not get involved because the government is now using other ways of controlling the border and is unlikely to bring back metering because it pushed asylum-seekers to cross the border between ports of entry.
..... The administration's appeal is expected to be heard next year [2026] and decide by the end of June. [2026]
..... In an unrelated case on November 17, [2025] the Supreme Court decided it was not ready to tackle the tricky combination of faith and football games again, rejecting an appeal from a Christian high school in Florida that was blocked form leading a communal prayer before a state championship football game, a case that could have further expanded religious expressions in public places.
..... In 2022, the conservative court backed a high school football coach's right to offer prayers on the field after games despite objections from the school district that students felt compelled to take part.
..... But on November 17, [2025] the court let stand a lower court's ruling that pregame programs over the loudspeaker at a state-run event are a from of "government speech," and the school doesn't have a constitutional right to direct that speech.
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The court's decision not to get involved has no practical effect on Cambridge Christian School, which sued the Florida High School Athletic Association in 2015 after its request to pray over the loudspeaker was denied.
..... Since then, Florida passed legislation requiring the athletic association to allow schools to make opening remarks at games it oversees, and the association has said that includes communal prayers.
..... Cambridge Christian's appeal was backed by a number of religious groups and by Joseph Kennedy, the high school football coach at the center of the court's 2022 decision decision leading prayers on the field.
..... Kennedy said the clear lesson from his case is that "government entities may not single out religious expression for exclusion simply because it is religious."
..... The dispute began when Cambridge Christian and another Christian school made it to the 2015 state championship/
..... The state athletic association denied their request to sue the public address system to pray as part of the pregame system to pray as part of the pregame announcements. Instead, the associate suggested the schools gather as teams to pray before the kickoff, which they did.
..... when Cambridge Christian later sued, both the district court and the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the school.
..... The appeals court said spectators at the game would reasonably believe the state had endorsed the prayer.
..... The appeals court relied in part on a 2000 Supreme Court ruling, Santa Fe Independent School district v. Doe, striking down the district;s policy of allowing student-led prayer at football games over the pubic-address system.