Justices allowing administration to maintain policy on refugees

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to maintain its restrictive policyon refugees.

The justices on Tuesday agreed to an administration request to block a lower courtruling that would have eased the refugee ban and allowedup to 24,000 refugees to enter the country before the endof October.

The court issued a oneparagraph statement granting the administration’s request for a stay of the latest legal maneuvering involving the president’s executive order on immigration. There were no recorded dissents to the decision reversing rulings by a federal judge in Hawaii and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in SanFrancisco.

The 9th Circuit had cleared the way for as many as 24,000 refugees to be exempt from the ban and come to this country as long as one of several nonprofit groups had given a “formal assurance” they were preparedto receive them.

Administration lawyers argued these people did not qualify for an exemption because they had “no contact” or previous relationship with anyone in this country, which was the criteria set under a previous SupremeCourt decision.

On Monday, government lawyersfiled an appeal with Justice Anthony Kennedy, who agreed to a temporary freeze.

On Tuesday, the full courtsaid it had granted the administration’s appeal. The 9th Circuit’s ruling “is stayed with respect to refugees covered by a formal assurance, pending further order of this court.”

The order was not the court’s last word on the travel policy that President Donald Trump first rolled out in January. 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 anywherein the world.

In the meantime, the court temporarily reinstated the travel ban — but only for people without “a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

The meaning of that phrase has been contested ever since. The court did not specify which relatives qualified,for instance, but it did say that spouses and mothers-in-law “clearly” counted.

“As for entities,” the court said, “the relationship must be formal, documented, and formed in the ordinary course, rather than for the purpose of evading” the executive order.

It’s unclear 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 expirea month later.

The White House said Tuesday night: “We are pleased that the Supreme Court has allowed key components of the order to remain in effect. We will continue to vigorously defend the order leading up to next month’s oral argument in the Supreme Court.”

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

Lower courts have ruled that the bans violate the Constitution and federal immigration law. 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 not enforce the bans against people who have a “bona fide” relationship with people or entities in the UnitedStates.

The appeals court also upheld another part of the judge’s ruling that applies to the ban on visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan,Syria and Yemen.

Grandparents and cousins of people already in the U.S. can’t be excluded from the country under the travel ban, as the Trump administration had wanted.

The administration did not ask the Supreme Court to block that part of the ruling.