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While a “public charge” inadmissibility standard has long been part of U.S. immigration law, it had not been formally defined by statute. The rule, announced by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in August, defines a “public charge” as an immigrant who received one or more designated benefits for more than 12 months within a 36-month period.

“The principle driving it is an old American value, and that’s self-sufficiency,” USCIS Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli told Fox News in an interview last year. “It’s a core principle -- the American Dream itself -- and it’s one of the things that distinguishes us, and it's central to the legal history in the U.S. back into the 1800s.”

Those benefits that would be designated included Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), as well as most forms of Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps. The rule expands the number of benefits that can be considered from interim guidance issued in 1999.

The court’s liberal justices, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, would have blocked the regulation’s enforcement.

After losing at the lower courts, the Justice Department asked the high court to intervene, allowing temporary enforcement until the issue is resolved on the merits. The states of Connecticut, Vermont, and New York, as well as New York City and immigrant rights groups had brought the suit.

The Trump Justice Department has gone repeatedly to the Supreme Court to lift court-ordered injunctions, bypassing the traditional appellate process.

Justice Neil Gorsuch -- supported by Justice Clarence Thomas -- wrote a separate concurrence, criticizing the increased reliance on nationwide injunctions to block government policies.

“The real problem here is the increasingly common practice of trial courts ordering relief that transcends the cases before them. Whether framed as injunctions of 'nationwide,' 'universal,' or 'cosmic' scope, these orders share the same basic flaw—they direct how the defendant must act toward persons who are not parties to the case,” Gorsuch wrote.