Key Points

  • The D.C. Circuit, 2-1, reversed the denial of a preliminary injunction sought by 27 religious organizations challenging DHS's January 2025 rescission of the Mayorkas Memo's sensitive-locations policy.
  • The majority held that the organizations likely have associational standing because their member congregations face a credible threat of imminent immigration enforcement at houses of worship, rejecting the district court's firearms-case 'singled out' test in favor of Babbitt's credible-threat standard.
  • The majority held that both requested remedies, reinstating the Mayorkas Memo and a judicial-warrant requirement absent exigent circumstances, would likely redress at least some of the injury, applying Diamond Alternative Energy's 'even one' standard.
  • Judge Rao dissented, arguing that reinstating nonbinding guidance would not predictably change enforcement, that the case is indistinguishable from Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights v. Mullin, and that a judicial-warrant injunction would exceed equitable power and be barred by 8 U.S.C. 1252(f)(1).
  • The case was remanded to the district court for further consideration of the preliminary injunction motion.

A divided federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that 27 Christian and Jewish organizations likely have standing to challenge the Department of Homeland Security's decision to let immigration agents conduct operations at churches, synagogues and other houses of worship. The ruling revives the groups' request to restore a policy that had largely kept agents away from those sites for more than 30 years.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed a district court order denying the groups a preliminary injunction, a form of interim relief while a lawsuit proceeds. Judge Pan wrote the opinion for the court. Judge Rao dissented.

The decision returns the injunction request to the district court, which had rejected it solely because it found the groups likely lacked standing, the constitutional requirement that a plaintiff show an injury caused by the defendant that a court can remedy. The majority also rejected the dissent's position that reinstating nonbinding agency guidance would only speculatively change how agents enforce the law.

The government adopted a "Sensitive Locations Policy" in 1993, directing immigration authorities to "attempt to avoid apprehension of persons and to tightly control investigative operations on the premises of schools, places of worship, funerals and other religious ceremonies." Its most recent version, a 2021 memo from then-Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, generally required agents to obtain headquarters approval before acting in or near a protected area, with exceptions for emergencies.

On Jan. 20, 2025, Acting DHS Secretary Benjamine Huffman rescinded that memo and told officers to "use [their] discretion along with a healthy dose of common sense." An ICE memo issued 11 days later let field supervisors approve such operations case by case. A DHS press release said ICE agents "believe that rescinding the Mayorkas [Memo] is going to free them up to go after more illegal immigrants."

The plaintiffs sued in February 2025 under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. They include 16 denominational bodies, among them the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A., and the Union for Reform Judaism, and 11 associations such as the Rabbinical Assembly. Their declarations described ICE agents entering a Methodist church's daycare office in Georgia and photographing people in line at a congregation's food pantry in California.

The district court held that the threat of enforcement was not imminent because the groups had not shown they were "singled out or uniquely targeted by the government for enforcement," a test drawn from firearms cases. Judge Pan wrote that "the legal standard applied by the district court is inapposite." The majority applied instead the Supreme Court's 1979 decision in Babbitt v. United Farm Workers National Union, under which a "credible threat" of enforcement suffices.

Judge Pan wrote that "plaintiffs have direct evidence that the government intends to increase immigration enforcement at sensitive locations — that is the whole point of the Rescission Memo." The government did not dispute that the threatened injury flowed from the policy change, the opinion said.

The panel split over redressability, the requirement that a court order be likely to remedy the injury. Relying on the Supreme Court's 2025 decision in Diamond Alternative Energy v. EPA, Judge Pan wrote that the groups needed to show only that reinstating the Mayorkas memo was likely to produce "even one" fewer enforcement operation at "even one" plaintiff-affiliated place of worship. Under the dissent's reasoning, Judge Pan wrote, "a policy that presumptively prohibits enforcement activity at houses of worship is not likely to affect enforcement activity at houses of worship."

Citing Bennett v. Spear, Judge Pan wrote that even nonbinding agency materials exert "a powerful coercive effect" on executive action. "If the Mayorkas Memo had as little effect as the dissent posits, the Administration would have had no need to rescind it in order to effectuate its new and more aggressive approach to immigration enforcement," the majority wrote. It distinguished a 2023 Supreme Court decision, United States v. Texas, in which two states sought to make DHS arrest more noncitizens, while the groups here challenge a policy that targets their members' places of worship. It also distinguished the D.C. Circuit's 2026 decision in Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights v. Mullin, where challengers had left unchallenged a regulation authorizing the same policy.

The majority also held the groups likely have standing to seek an order barring enforcement at their members' houses of worship absent exigent circumstances or a judicial warrant. A warrant requirement "would slow down the pace of enforcement, and the administrative burden likely would deter at least some agents from seeking to conduct enforcement operations at houses of worship," Judge Pan wrote.

Judge Rao wrote that the Mayorkas memo left agents' legal authority and discretion intact. "Plaintiffs ultimately offer only speculation that restoring policy guidance from a previous administration will change the enforcement practices of this one," the dissent said. It called the case "materially indistinguishable" from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights decision and added that "mere exhortation cannot justify exercise of the Article III judicial power."

Judge Rao would have sent the warrant question back for the district court to analyze standing first. The dissent also said a warrant requirement would exceed federal courts' equitable powers and would be barred by 8 U.S.C. § 1252(f)(1), a provision that limits lower courts' power to enjoin parts of the immigration laws. The dissent noted that the Supreme Court granted review on Sept. 29 in DHS v. D.V.D., which presents a related question under that provision.

The majority declined to address those merits points, noting that the district court never analyzed its authority to impose a warrant requirement and that the parties had not briefed the issue. "We are a court of review, not first view," Judge Pan wrote, quoting circuit precedent.

In August, the Fourth Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction requiring DHS to revert to the Mayorkas memo at the houses of worship of plaintiffs in a parallel suit brought by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.

Kelsi Brown Corkran argued for the religious organizations. Michael E. Talent of the Justice Department argued for the government.

The panel remanded the case to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for further consideration of the preliminary injunction motion, including the warrant requirement that the dissent said courts cannot impose.