Niz-Chavez v. Garland, 141 S. Ct. 1474 (2021) (U.S. Supreme Court)
Niz-Chavez v. Garland is a landmark Supreme Court decision at the intersection of immigration procedure and textual statutory interpretation.
Does the stop-time rule in 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(d)(1) get triggered when the government serves a noncitizen with an initial notice to appear that lacks the time and place of the hearing but later sends supplemental notices with that information, or does the statute require service of a single, complete notice to appear containing all of § 1229(a)(1)'s required information?
Under 8 U.S.C. § 1229b(d)(1), the stop-time rule is triggered "when the alien is served a notice to appear under section 1229(a)." Section 1229(a)(1) defines "a notice to appear" as a single written notice "specifying" the information enumerated in subparagraphs (A)–(G), including "the time and place at which the proceedings will be held." To trigger the stop-time rule, the government must serve one document that itself contains all of § 1229(a)(1)'s required information; service via multiple, later-in-time documents does not suffice.
No. The government must serve a single, statutorily compliant notice to appear that includes the time and place of the hearing to trigger the stop-time rule. A defective notice to appear that omits those details cannot be cured by later supplemental notices for purposes of § 1229b(d)(1). The Supreme Court reversed the judgment below.
For immigration law, Niz-Chavez cements that the stop-time rule hinges on a single, compliant charging document, not a mosaic of notices. Practically, it meant that many noncitizens who received defective NTAs continued to accrue continuous presence for cancellation of removal until the government served a proper, one-piece notice. For law students, the case is a study in precise textualism: the force of an article ("a"), the function of cross-references, and how statutory structure can resolve high-volume administrative disputes. It also illustrates the Court's reluctance to subordinate unambiguous statutory text to efficiency arguments, and the decision's aftermath reshaped agency charging practices nationwide.