Trump appeals travel ban order to Supreme Court
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court late Thursday to revive his temporary ban on foreigners arriving from six majority-Muslim nations, setting the stage for a potentially farreaching ruling on the president’s power to control immigration.
At issue is whether Trump’s revised travel order is a legitimate effort to protect the nation from terrorism or a thinly veiled scheme to screen out Muslims.
To resolve that question, the Supreme Court would have to decide whether the president has the final word on the rules for admitting foreigner visitors, immigrants and refugees.
In a lengthy appeal filed Thursday evening, Justice Department lawyers asked the Supreme Court for an emergency order that revives the travel ban, and they urged the justices to review and reverse last week’s ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which declared it unconstitutional.
That decision “globally enjoins a formal national security determination by the president of the United States, on the basis that he — and, by implication, the Cabinet-level officials who recommended this measure — acted in bad faith,” said acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall.
He said there was a “reasonable probability” the justices would reverse the 4th Circuit’s ruling, and he said Trump’s order should be allowed to go into effect.
The administration is seeking a fast decision from the Supreme Court. The justices usually go on a summer recess at the end of June after having issued their opinions in all the pending cases.
The travel ban case will probably be handled as an emergency matter by the Supreme Court.
Nearly all the lower courts that have ruled so far have found that while the president has broad power in the area of immigration, Trump’s order was unconstitutional nonetheless because it amounted to religious discrimination. In doing so, judges cited Trump’s own words, including his campaign promise to enact “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”