The Supreme Court green card case in Blanche v. Lau ended Tuesday with a 6–3 ruling for Clarence Thomas, who wrote that border officers do not need clear and convincing evidence before treating some returning holders as applicants for admission. The decision leaves Muk Choi Lau exposed to the border rule that can turn a return trip into parole instead of admission.
Blanche v. Lau
Thomas wrote for the majority that officers do not need clear and convincing evidence that a green-card holder committed a crime of moral turpitude before treating the person as an applicant for admission. He declined to say what burden the government bears at the border, leaving the Court without a stated rule for that question.
That gap matters for returning green-card holders because the case turns on how border officers classify them when they come back to the United States. Admission as a lawful permanent resident carries one result; parole as an arriving alien carries another, and the Court's ruling gives officers more room to choose the second path.
Muk Choi Lau in 2012
Muk Choi Lau returned to the United States in 2012 after a trip to China. He faced criminal charges for selling designer-style shorts with a counterfeit trademark when he came back, and a border officer refused to formally admit him, snatched his green card, and paroled him into the country as an arriving alien.
That sequence put Lau in the position the Court addressed: a returning green-card holder treated not as someone simply reentering, but as an applicant for admission. The parole status the officer used can make a holder far more vulnerable to detention and deportation than admission as a lawful permanent resident.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented and said the court had handed the government a massive blank check. Her criticism targeted the majority's refusal to set out the burden the government must meet at the border, even as the ruling expanded the officers' room to act first and justify later.
For returning green-card holders, the practical result is that the border officer's decision now carries more weight than the evidentiary standard the Court declined to define. The open question is how often officers will use that discretion against people in the same position as Lau.
