The legal fight over Temporary Protected Status just shifted hard. On June 25, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 in Mullin v. Doe that federal courts cannot review most challenges to TPS terminations. The decision lifted the lower-court orders that had paused the end of TPS for Haiti and Syria, clearing the way for the Department of Homeland Security to proceed. Immigration attorneys at Ogletree Deakins read the ruling as closing off the legal avenue that had repeatedly delayed these terminations.
The numbers are not small. A June 2026 Seyfarth analysis put the affected population at more than 356,000 work-authorized individuals, roughly 350,000 Haitian nationals and about 6,100 Syrian nationals. Many have held work authorization and built careers in the United States for more than a decade.
Within days of the ruling, the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association sent members an urgent call to action. FRLA asked operators to contact their congressional delegation and describe how an abrupt end to TPS work authorization would affect the state's hospitality workforce, local businesses, and the communities they serve. FRLA followed up again on July 1, the same day USCIS moved the compliance deadline, repeating the same ask with more urgency now that the window has narrowed. The advocacy is worth supporting. The operational reality runs in parallel. Some of your team's work authorization may be about to lapse.
Here is where policy becomes a compliance task.
USCIS guidance now lists July 10, 2026, not July 1, as the work authorization expiration date for Haitian and Syrian TPS beneficiaries for Form I-9 and E-Verify purposes. USCIS pushed the date on July 1, the same day the prior placeholder expired, according to a July 2026 Littler Mendelson analysis. The new date is still a placeholder, not a termination date. USCIS instructs employers to enter 'as per court order' in Form I-9 Section 1, record July 10, 2026 in Section 2, and use that same date as the expiration date in E-Verify. The underlying cases, Miot v. Trump in the District of Columbia and Doe v. Noem in the Southern District of New York, remain active while the Supreme Court's judgment works through the lower courts. DHS is expected to issue further guidance, and counsel widely expect the placeholder date to move again before either case resolves. The USCIS Temporary Protected Status page is the source to watch daily, ideally more than once a day given how quickly this changed on July 1. USCIS Temporary Protected Status page is the source to watch daily.
The safest position is neither panic nor inaction. It is preparation.
Florida already runs one of the stricter verification regimes in the country.
Since July 1, 2023, Section 448.095 of the Florida Statutes, passed as SB 1718, has required private employers with 25 or more employees to use E-Verify for new hires, a change Greenberg Traurig flagged as a major expansion of the prior public-employer rule. Repeat noncompliance carries significant penalties. The state can impose a $1,000 per day fine after three violations in a 24-month period and can move to suspend or revoke business licenses.
Restaurants and hotels feel this more than most employers. Hospitality runs on high-volume, fast-turnover hiring, and it sits among the industries federal authorities watch most closely for I-9 problems, a pattern we covered in our look at how I-9 audits are tightening on hospitality and other sectors.
So Florida operators face risk in both directions. Act too fast and terminate someone whose authorization is still valid, and you invite a discrimination or unfair documentary practice claim. Act too slow and keep someone past a confirmed expiration, and you risk knowingly employing an unauthorized worker. The fines tied to that second mistake can reach into the thousands per worker, as recent I-9 enforcement cases show.
You cannot control the federal timeline. You can control your readiness.
Start by auditing your workforce for TPS-dependent authorization. Pull every active Form I-9 and flag employees whose work authorization rests on a TPS-based Employment Authorization Document, usually marked category A12 or C19.
Keep honoring valid documents. The ruling does not, by itself, end anyone's authorization today. Continue accepting currently valid EADs and hold off on adverse action until DHS confirms the effective date.
Prepare for reverification, not termination. When authorization genuinely expires, the correct step is reverification using Supplement B of Form I-9, with proper notice and a fair opportunity to present other valid work authorization.
Watch the right sources. Monitor the USCIS TPS pages for Haiti and Syria, and run the E-Verify Status Change Report to catch rescinded EADs before they become a problem.
Document every decision. A consistent, well-recorded process is your best defense if an auditor or a plaintiff's attorney later asks why you did what you did.
The reasoning in Mullin v. Doe reaches well past two countries.USCIS applied the same July 10 placeholder date on July 1 to five other TPS designations under active litigation: Burma, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen. If you employ TPS holders from any of these countries, treat this update as a preview of what is coming to your I-9 files, not a one-time correction.
This is the kind of week where a reactive I-9 process falls behind and a prepared one holds. We built Clear I-9 for exactly this moment: tracked expirations, automated reverification workflows, E-Verify case management, and audit-ready records that survive a change in the rules. For Florida operators carrying the state E-Verify mandate on top of federal I-9 duties, harmonizing both obligations is the difference between a controlled response and a scramble.
TPS will keep moving. Your compliance posture does not have to move with every headline.