Supreme Court OKs limited version of Trump travel ban
Justices to consider broad immigration powers in the fall
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to allow a limited version of President Donald Trump’s ban on travelers from six mostly Muslim countries to take effect and will consider in the fall the president’s broad powers in immigration matters in a case that raises fundamental issues of national security and religious discrimination.
In a statement, Trump called the ruling “a clear victory for our national security.”
“Today’s ruling allows me to use an important tool to protect our Nation’s homeland. I also am particularly gratified that the Supreme Court’s decision was 9-0,” he said.
The president said last week that the ban would go into effect 72 hours after receiving approval from the courts.
The court made an important exception: It said the ban “may not be enforced against foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”
In the unsigned opinion, the court said that a foreign
national who wants to visit or live with a family member would have such a relationship, and so would students from the designated countries — Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — who were admitted to a U.S. university.
The court said it would hear the case when it reconvenes in October. But it also indicated in the ruling that things may change dramatically by then. It asked the parties to address whether the case would be moot by the time the court hears it; the ban is supposed to be a temporary one while the government reviews its procedures.
And the justices said they “fully expect” the government to be able to conduct its review within the 90-day span the executive order proposes.
That affects the ban on travel from the six countries and a 120-day ban on all refugees entering the United States, with the exceptions noted by the court.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch would have let the ban take effect as written and objected to what they called the court’s “compromise.”
A partial stay will “burden executive officials with the task of deciding — on peril of contempt — whether individuals from the six affected nations who wish to enter the United States have a sufficient connection to a person or entity in this country,” Thomas wrote.
Such a compromise, the justices said, will lead to a “flood of litigation” over what constitutes a “bona fide relationship” before the overall case is resolved after oral argument in the fall.
They added that the court has made an “implicit conclusion” that the administration will prevail.
The proposed travel ban has been a major point of contention between Trump and civil rights groups, which say it was motivated by unconstitutional discrimination against Muslims.
Trump contends the ban is necessary to protect the nation while the administration decides whether tougher visa procedures and other measures are needed.
Because the executive order was blocked by lower courts, travelers from those countries have been entering the United States through normal visa procedures. Trump first moved to implement the restrictions in January in his first week in office.
His first executive order went into effect immediately and resulted in chaos at airports in the United States and abroad, as travelers from the targeted countries were either stranded or sent back to their countries.
Lawyers for challengers to the order rushed to federal courts, and the order was stayed within days. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit eventually said the order could not be implemented, infuriating the president, who said he would take the case to the Supreme Court.
But instead, his administration regrouped and issued a second order in March. It added a section detailing national security concerns, removed Iraq from the list of countries affected, deleted a section that had targeted Syrian refugees and removed a provision that favored Christian immigrants.
His lawyers told courts that the new order was written to respond to the 9th Circuit’s concerns. But new lawsuits were immediately filed, and federal judges once again blocked the implementation.
A federal district judge in Maryland blocked the portion of the order affecting travelers from the six countries; a judge in Hawaii froze that portion and the part affecting refugee programs.
Appeals courts on both coasts upheld those decisions.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond agreed with U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland, who sided with opponents in finding that the ban violates the Constitution by intentionally discriminating against Muslims.
The court noted Trump’s remarks before and after his election about implementing a ban on Muslims and said the executive order “in context drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination.”
Meanwhile, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit said Trump had not adhered to federal law in which Congress gives the president broad power in immigration matters.
The 9th Circuit judges ruled that the travel ban lacked a sufficient national security or other justification that would make it legal, and that violated immigration law.
In both appeals courts, a minority of conservative judges had said their colleagues were making a mistake. Judges should look only to whether the executive orders were proper on their face, they said, without trying to decide whether the president had ulterior motives and defer to national security decisions made by the executive branch.