Supreme Court likely to get Trump’s travel-ban case
WASHINGTON — Federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland handed President Trump’s revised travel ban two significant defeats Wednesday and Thursday, blocking critical sections of the executive order just hours before officials were set to enforce them. Soon after the first ruling, Trump vowed to take the case to the Supreme Court, if need be, while also declaring he “ought to” restore his original travel ban and fight for it in court.
Trump has been in a similar predicament before, after a federal judge in Washington state suspended his first travel ban. His options now, though, seem even more limited. He has already revoked and rewritten the order — and even the significant changes he made weren’t enough to convince the judiciary that his directive should be allowed to take effect, at least for now.
He has two rulings against him in two different federal circuits, meaning he’ll now have to convince two different appeals courts to overturn lower judges’ rulings and immediately lift the freeze on his ban, said Stephen W. Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School. A federal judge in Washington is also expected to weigh in soon.
All roads, legal analysts say, now likely lead to the Supreme Court.
The last time around, Justice Department lawyers filed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit an emergency motion to stop a lower judge’s freeze on his ban. That bid was rejected and, ultimately, a three-judge panel ruled unanimously that the ban should remain on hold.
Hawaii, where U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson issued the most sweeping suspension of Trump’s new ban Wednesday, is in the 9th Circuit, so Trump’s appeal would again have to go through that court. The court has a reputation for being liberal, and Trump has referred to it as a circuit “in chaos.”
The 4th Circuit, of which Maryland is a part, had a reputation for being more conservative, though in recent years it has seemed to become more liberal, said Leon Fresco, the deputy assistant attorney general for the Office of Immigration Litigation in former Barack Obama’s Justice Department.
Yale-Loehr said the government’s first step likely would be to appeal to both places, as a favorable ruling in one case would not undo the restraining order in the other. U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang, the federal judge in Maryland, issued a somewhat narrower restraining order than the one in Hawaii, but it was still significant. He blocked the key section of the executive order that stopped the issuance of new visas to residents of six Muslimmajority countries.