The Supreme Court on Monday shot down GOP-led states’ attempt to defend President Biden’s tougher rules governing asylum seekers, leaving the administration free to negotiate a weaker compromise with immigrant rights advocates.

The rules were announced in 2023 and were meant to replace the pandemic expulsion powers that had helped tame some of the migrant surge. The Biden administration had been defending the rules in the courts but then did what one judge called a “surprising switcheroo” and said it wanted to settle, forcing the GOP-led states to get involved.

They asked the courts to let them defend the rules in lieu of Mr. Biden. A lower appeals court refused and on Monday the justices let that decision stand without comment.

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Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach had pleaded with the court to let him intervene, saying someone needed to defend the rule after “the federal government’s bizarre about-face.”

“The States have paramount interests in the federal government’s original litigation position … so they can no longer rely on the federal government to adequately represent these interests in settlement negotiations,” he argued.

The Biden administration said it “remains committed” to defending the 2023 rule. It also told the justices that it’s been superseded in some ways by an even more strenuous border policy issued earlier this year.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is handling the case for the immigration activists, also didn’t want the GOP-led states getting involved, insisting that the Biden administration is approaching the case in good faith.

Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s chief lawyer on the case, said Mr. Kobach and the other GOP attorneys general never provided evidence to show that the federal government would undermine the rule in settlement talks.

The 2023 rule said that unauthorized migrants who jump the border rather than attempt to enter at an official crossing would be presumed to be ineligible for asylum. They could try to rebut the presumption, but would start with a strike against them based on their illegal entry.

Officials hoped that would curtail the loophole that migrants had used to lodge iffy asylum claims with the knowledge they’d be caught and released and free to be in the U.S. for years as their cases proceeded. They also had little fear of being ousted even if their asylum claim failed.

A federal district judge had ruled against the policy. That decision was on hold as the case was being argued in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, when the Biden administration and the ACLU suddenly announced they would try to settle.