Judge Edward Chen Sets Up Supreme Court Review of Trump's Mass Deportations
By Tom Kagy | 02 May, 2025

A Chinese American Senior Judge has become one of the nation's most influential federal district court judges with his closely-reasoned opinions on high-profile cases.

At 71 Senior Judge Edward Chen continues to impact the national immigration dialogue with a March 31 ruling against Trump administration efforts to paint all Venezuelan immigrants as criminals requiring expedited deportation.

The ruling was on an action brought by seven Venezuelan immigrants seeking injunctive relief from an order by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to revoke an extension of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelans.  

The TPS had been granted by former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Jan. 17, 2025 allowing 350,000 Venezuelans to remain in the US through October 2026. Noem's DHS order requires them to leave the US by April 2 or face immediate deportation.

Central to Chen's ruling granting injunctive relief was what he concluded was an arbitrary, non-factual basis for the Trump administration's revocation of the extension.  What makes Chen's ruling broadly significant to all prospective deportations — including another 257,000 Venezuans whose TPS extensions are set to expire in September — his legal reasoning apply to all DHS efforts to paint migrants broadly as dangerous criminals requiring summary deportations without due process.

Reviewing the DHS termination of the TPS extension for Venezuelan migrants, Chen found it to be both “arbitrary” and “unlawful.”  In addition he found that significant harm was likely to be suffered by the migrants as well as the U.S. economy and society.

In rejecting the formulaic DHS argument that the Venezuelans are criminals whose presence pose a security risk to American society, Chen noted that the Venezuelan TPS holders displayed a lower crime rate and higher levels of education relative to the general U.S. population. The rush to mass deport law-abiding, contributing individuals could disrupt communities and harm the economy by depriving businesses of workers and families of their financial support, Chen added.

“It is evident that the Secretary made sweeping negative generalizations about Venezuelan TPS beneficiaries,” Chen wrote in a 78-page order. “Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotype to the entire group is the classic example of racism.”

In affirming the Plaintiffs' allegations that the order ending the TPS was motivated by racism, Chen's order also noted the pervasive racism expressed by the Trump administration in its crusade to bring about a rush of mass deportations.

President Trump made several discriminatory remarks, not only targeting Venezuelan immigrants or TPS holders but also non-white immigrants in general. His statements included derogatory comments about Haitian immigrants, TPS holders, and other non-white immigrants, such as claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were ‘eating the dogs’ and making disparaging remarks about Venezuelans and other immigrants being responsible for increasing crime.

The decision has been appealed to the Supreme Court which will likely hear it in expedited fashion given the sense of "national security" urgency with which the Trump administration paints all its deportation efforts.

Judge Chen's closely reasoned opinions, especially on cases of national significance, has made him recognized as one of the nation's most influential judges — an unusual distinction for a district judge who presides at the trial court level.  Typically that type of recognition is reserved for appellate judges whose role is to render precedential opinions on cases dealing with significant legal issues. 

As a judge in the Northern District of California which covers cases involving Silicon Valley firms, Chen has presided over high-profile cases of special significance to the tech industry.  They include the 2013 hacking conviction of a former Korn Ferry employee who never actually hacked into a computer system but obtained data from his former employer by paying former colleagues to access the system.  

In 2013 Chen certified a controversial class action filed by Uber drivers seeking compensation for being treated like employees without being compensated as such.  That decision led to a series of settlements over the ensuing decade covering various groups of drivers during various periods of time which never resolved the question of whether Uber drivers are employees or independent contractors under California law.  That issue was ultimately put to rest in 2020 by Proposition 22 which deemed them to be independent contractors.

On September 24, 2024 Chen found for the plaintiff after a court trial (in which the decision is made by a judge without a jury) brought by a non-profit against the EPA under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) over water fluoridation.  Chen found that "the fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligrams per liter — a level presently considered 'optimal' in the United States – poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children."  He left the decision of how to remedy that risk to the EPA as prescribed by the TSCA, saying, "One thing the EPA cannot do, however, in the face of this Court’s finding, is to ignore that risk."

Edward Chen was born and raised in Oakland.  He graduated from US Berkeley in 1975 and received his JD from the UC Berkeley School of Law in 1979.  After a year clerking for a local Federal District Court judge he took off for a year before returning to clerk for a judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals from June 1981 to June 1982.

After three years as an associate at the San Francisco firm of Coblentz, Cahen, McCabe & Breyer, in September 1985 Chen worked on language-discrimination cases for the American Civil Liberties Union.  In April 2001 he was appointed to an eight-year term as a magistrate judge for District Court for the Northern District of California.

His elevation to a judgeship at the same District Court didn't come easy.  His nomination by President Barack Obama on August 7, 2009 was advanced by the Senate Judiciary Committee  by a 12–7 vote but was rejected by the full Senate on December 24, 2009. Thanks in part to support from Senator Feinstein President Obama renominated Chen in January 2010 only to have it be rejected again by the full Senate. Obama renominated Chen for a third time in September 2010 and a fourth time in January 2011.  The nomination was finally confirmed by a 56-42 vote of the Senate on May 10, 2011.

Perhaps in recognition of the sustained effort behind his judgeship, Chen has been a highly prolific opinion writer, especially on cases of major legal significance. While his opinions don't carry the binding precedential value of appellate court opinions, well-reasoned District Court opinions tend to impact rulings in similar cases across the federal court system, including at the appellate level.