Reno v. Catholic Social Services, Inc.(CSS) is a case from the Ninth Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court where the Circuit court upheld an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) regulation that required illegal immigrants to obtain INS approval before leaving the United States even for a brief, casual, and innocent absence. (Read the Ninth Circuit opinion here.) The Supreme Court case struck down the class action suit for not being ripe because the regulations did not affect the parties’ rights enough individually or cumulatively.
The plaintiffs initially filed a class action lawsuit in 1986, challenging an immigration regulation which required illegal immigrants to obtain INS approval before leaving the United States, even for a brief, casual, and innocent absence. The case went through several series of litigation, even reaching the Supreme Court, in Reno v. Catholic Social Services.
When the Ninth Circuit heard the case again in 1997, it found that the plaintiffs lacked standing under a new statute which limited litigants’ ability to sue on this issue. Therefore, the INS regulation requiring that aliens obtain pre-approval before leaving the United States remained in force. A few years later, the Ninth Circuit heard their case again in Catholic Social Services v. I.N.S., this time ruling in the plaintiffs’ favor. The favorable ruling was ultimately of little import, however, as Congress passed the LIFE Act in 2000, amending the statute to allow standing in cases such as this case.
[Last updated in January of 2022 by the Wex Definitions Team]