The court’s brief, unsigned orders on Monday urged appeals courts to move swiftly to determine whether the latest ban was lawful. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have denied the administration’s request to allow the latest ban to go into effect. The court’s orders mean that the administration can fully enforce its new restrictions on travel from eight nations, six of them predominantly Muslim. For now, most citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea will be barred from entering the United States, along with some groups of people from Venezuela. The restrictions vary in their details, but in most cases, citizens of the countries will be unable to emigrate to the United States permanently and many will be barred from working, studying or vacationing here.
The Supreme Court in Washington. The third and newest version of the travel ban, issued by President Trump in September, imposed restrictions on citizens of Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.
Iran, for example, will still be able to send its citizens on student exchanges, though such visitors will be subject to enhanced screening. Somalis will no longer be allowed to emigrate to the United States, but may visit with extra screening. The Supreme Court’s orders effectively overturned a compromise in place since June, when the court said travelers with connections to the United States could continue to travel here notwithstanding restrictions in earlier version of the ban. The orders gave no reasons for the court’s shift. The move did suggest that the administration’s chances of prevailing at the Supreme Court when the justices consider the lawfulness of the latest ban have markedly increased. In a pair of filings in the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco said Mr. Trump had acted under his broad constitutional and statutory authority to control immigration when he issued a new proclamation in September announcing the new travel restrictions.
Mr. Francisco wrote that the process leading to the proclamation was more deliberate than those that had led to earlier bans, issued in January and March. Those orders were temporary measures, he wrote, while the proclamation was the product of extensive study and deliberation. Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents people and groups challenging the ban, told the justices that little had changed. “The proclamation is the third order the president has signed this year banning more than 100 million individuals from Muslim-majority nations from coming to the United States,” they wrote.
In October, federal judges in Maryland and Hawaii blocked major parts of the latest ban while legal challenges proceed. “A nationality-based travel ban against eight nations consisting of over 150 million people is unprecedented,” wrote Judge Theodore D. Chuang of the Federal District Court in Maryland. Citing statements from Mr. Trump, some made as a presidential candidate and some more recent, Judge Chuang found that the new proclamation was tainted by religious animus and most likely violated the Constitution’s prohibition of government establishment of religion.
MORE
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by waltky
