Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-954_7l48.pdf
Page Number: 40.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

7 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

Tr. of Oral Arg. 13–14.  But none of the papers filed by the
Government in this case or in Gonzalez said one word about 
APA review.  Nor did the respondents’ brief.  Indeed, their 
brief did not discuss jurisdiction at all.

Faced  with  this  situation,  the  Court  was  correctly  con-
cerned about deciding the reach of §1252(f )(1) and the im-
portant  APA  question  without  any  briefing.    The  Court 
could have—and, in my judgment, should have—dealt with
this problem by deciding this case without saying anything 
about §1252(f )(1) other than that it bars injunctive relief.
Instead, with the end of the Term looming ahead, the Court 
directed the parties to brief these issues, but it gave them 
just one week to do so.  And as the Court should have antic-
ipated, those briefs raised new questions that it would have 
been useful to explore at argument had that been held.  But 
determined to accommodate the Government’s request that 
this  case  be  decided  this  Term,  the  majority  inadvisably 
plows ahead.

I would not do so.  Because of the Government’s request
for a speedy decision, we established an expedited schedule 
for the filing of merits briefs and squeezed in oral argument 
on the next-to-last argument date.  We would have been in 
a position to give thorough consideration to the §1252(f )(1)
issue if it had been addressed in the parties’ regular briefs, 
but having relegated the issue to a terse footnote in its brief, 
and having been unprepared to discuss the issue at argu-
ment, the Government is not entitled to any further special 
treatment.  We should simply vacate the decision below and 
remand for reconsideration in light of our decision in Gon-
zalez.3  Nothing more is either necessary or appropriate un-
der the circumstances. 

III 
The Court is not only wrong to reach the merits of this 

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3 Alternatively, the Court could have put the case over to next Term, 

received full briefing, and heard argument in October.