Supreme Court to make ruling on Trump’s travel ban

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court Friday agreed to decide whether President Donald Trump has the legal power to bar tens of thousands of visitors and immigrants from several mostly Muslim nations from entering this country.

The court’s ruling could be one of its most significant pronouncements on the chief executive’s power, acting on his own, to decide who may come to the United States.

The legal fight over Trump’s travel ban has simmered through his first year in office. At the end of his first week in the White House, Trump signed a hastily crafted order that disrupted travel plans across the globe, triggered protests at airports across the nation and spurred a series of lawsuits.

Since then, federal judges in Hawaii, Maryland and Washington state have issued rulings to block Trump’s order, and those decisions have been repeatedly upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and the 4th Circuit Court in Richmond, Va.

In the early rounds, lawyers pointed to Trump’s promise as a presidential candidate to enact a "Muslim ban," and judges agreed his order reflected an unconstitutional discrimination based on religion. More recently, the legal battles have focused tightly on the provisions of U.S. immigration law.

So far, the Supreme Court has leaned in favor of the administration. The justices in June allowed much of the travel ban to take effect, except for those who already had established close ties to people or institutions in this country.

And on Dec. 4, the justices took the unusual step of sweeping aside the injunctions handed down by several judges and allowing Trump’s full travel ban to take effect, even though the cases were about to be heard by two appeals courts. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

That move suggested the court’s conservatives were exasperated by liberal trial judges issuing sweeping nationwide orders that rejected the president’s plan.

The high court has not spoken directly on the underlying legal issues, but last month’s order signals the challengers likely will have an uphill fight.

Their best hope may lie with a close reading of conflicting provisions in immigration laws.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to set the law on immigration, and the president is given the duty to enforce it. One provision, enacted in 1952, says the president may "suspend the entry of ... any class of aliens ... for such period as he shall deem necessary."

Trump’s lawyers rely heavily on this clause and argue it gives the president nearly unchecked power, especially during national emergencies, to screen out people from certain countries whom he thinks might pose a threat to national security.