Not a Ruling on the Merits

U.S. Border Patrol agents encountering migrants in Eagle Pass, Texas. Source: NYT.

After years of legal battles, Texas is finally close to getting what it wanted. On Friday, the full Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 10-7 to lift the injunction blocking Senate Bill 4, the state's sweeping immigration enforcement law. They found that the legal groups and Texas county challenging the law lacked standing to bring the case. Passed in 2023, Senate Bill 4 allows state and local law enforcement to arrest people for immigration violations and permits state judges to issue deportation orders. It had been tied up in courts ever since, blocked by a federal judge and then subjected to contradictory rulings from three-judge Fifth Circuit panels. The federal government dropped its own challenge in March 2025 after Donald Trump took office, clearing the way for this week's en banc reconsideration. The majority's reasoning was narrow. Circuit Judge Jerry Smith wrote that advocacy groups voluntarily choosing to increase their representation of affected immigrants does not constitute the kind of legal injury required for standing. The court explicitly did not rule on whether SB4 is constitutional. Opponents say that's cold comfort. The ACLU's Cody Wofsy called Friday's decision “a procedural decision, not a ruling on the merits,” arguing that every court to examine similar laws has found them unconstitutional. Dissenters on the court agreed — Judge Stephen Higginson warned that Texas's law contains no asylum protections and “interferes with the federal scheme addressing who may be removed, how and to where.” The ruling is a procedural win masquerading as a policy one. Texas can now enforce SB4, but the constitutional question remains wide open, meaning the Supreme Court will almost certainly have the final word. What Friday's decision actually accomplished is accelerating that reckoning. Immigration enforcement has always been a federal prerogative, and a state law that allows local judges to issue deportation orders will eventually collide with that 150-year precedent head-on. Texas may have won the battle over standing. Whether it survives the merits is another matter entirely.