A federal district court in Massachusetts declined on August 5, 2026 to block the government from curtailing employment authorization for Temporary Protected Status beneficiaries from El Salvador, Ukraine and Sudan, allowing those work permits to lapse. The court, in Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts v. USCIS (No. 1:26-cv-13038), found the plaintiffs unlikely to succeed on their challenge to the curtailment policy.
The timing had been on a short fuse. Employment authorization for these beneficiaries was originally set to end July 22, 2026, but the court temporarily postponed that date through August 5. With the August 5 ruling, the postponement ended and the terminations were permitted to take effect.
The most disorienting feature for those affected is the mismatch between status and work permission. TPS itself has not ended for these countries on the same timeline: TPS for El Salvador remains in effect through September 9, 2026, and for Sudan and Ukraine through October 19, 2026. Beneficiaries can therefore hold valid protected status while losing the employment authorization that made that status practically meaningful — an outcome driven by H.R. 1, the legislation enacted in July 2025, which limited TPS-based EADs to one year, interacting with the 540-day maximum automatic EAD extension available to applications filed before October 30, 2025.
The consequences are immediate and concrete. Workers whose EADs lapse are no longer employment-authorized, and employers face reverification obligations that can result in termination where no valid document is presented. Beneficiaries who filed renewal applications during their re-registration window but have not yet received a new card are in a particularly murky position, since the status of their automatic extension is unclear following the ruling. USCIS is expected to issue instructions addressing the lapse.
Affected workers should not assume an expired card is still valid based on prior auto-extension math. The practical steps are to confirm the current status of any pending renewal application, retain all receipt notices, and speak with an employment or immigration attorney before a reverification deadline arrives rather than after. Employers should be equally careful — reverifying correctly matters, but so does avoiding premature adverse action against workers who do hold valid documentation.
This ruling continues a pattern seen throughout 2026, in which TPS work authorization has been extended, curtailed and re-extended in short, court-driven increments. Beneficiaries from other designated countries should treat their own EAD dates as provisional and monitor them closely.
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Source: Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts v. USCIS (D. Mass.)