Supreme Court backs Trump on travel ban

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to maintain its policy on refugees.

The justices on Tuesday unanimously agreed to an administration request to block a lower court ruling that would have blocked parts of the refugee ban and allowed up to 24,000 refugees to enter the country in the next month.

The justices are scheduled to hear arguments on Oct. 10 on the legality of the bans on travelers from six mostly Muslim countries and refugees anywhere in the world.

It’s unclear, though, what will be left for the court to decide. The 90-day travel ban lapses in late September and the 120-day refugee ban will expire a month later.

The administration has yet to say whether it will seek to renew the bans, make them permanent or expand the travel ban to other countries.

Several lower courts have attempted to block the bans on shaky Constitutional grounds. The high court has agreed to review those rulings. Its intervention so far has been to evaluate what parts of the policy can take effect in the meantime.

The justices said in June that the administration could enforce the ban except against people who have a “bona fide” relationship with people or entities in the United States. The justices declined to define the required relationships more precisely.

A panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district judge’s order that would have allowed refugees to enter the United States if a resettlement agency in the U.S. had agreed to take them in.

The administration objected, saying the relationship between refugees and resettlement agencies shouldn’t count. The high court’s unsigned, one-sentence order agreed with the administration.