Homeland Security officials said they were not abandoning the rule and were still considering an appeal of Judge Breyer’s ruling. For now they are “planning to provide an answer to the small number of minor issues that the judge raised in his opinion,” Laura Keehner, a spokeswoman for the department, said.  The legal challenge was brought by an odd-fellow alliance of labor unions and business groups, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the San Francisco Labor Council as well as the United States Chamber of Commerce.  “It’s clear the government has given up defending an indefensible rule,” said Lucas Guttentag, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, another group bringing the lawsuit. “But now they’re hoping to rush through another half-baked rule without addressing the fundamental flaws. It’s like putting lipstick on Frankenstein.”  The rule laid out procedures for employers to follow after receiving a notice from the Social Security Administration, known as a no-match letter, advising that an employee’s identity information did not match the agency’s records.  The employer would have had to fire an employee who could not provide verifiable information within 90 days, or face the risk of prosecution for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. Those immigrants often present fake Social Security numbers when applying for jobs.  Judge Breyer also stopped Social Security from sending out about 141,000 no-match letters, covering more than eight million workers, which contained instructions from Homeland Security about the rule. Social Security sends the letters to clarify workers’ information so it can correctly credit taxes deducted from their wages.  Some businesses welcomed the rule because it clarified what they had to do to avoid immigration raids. But the labor unions cited a report from the inspector general of the Social Security Administration finding that 12.7 million of the records of United States citizens in the agency’s database contained errors that could lead to them being fired.  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page 134 of the New York edition with the headline: Revised Rule For Employers That Hire Immigrants. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
The Bush administration will suspend its legal defense of a new rule to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants.