On Monday, December 4, 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that President Trump’s latest travel ban is now in full effect as legal challenges over the ban continue in lower courts. The nine-member court granted the administration’s request to lift two injunctions by lower courts that had partially blocked the ban, which is the third version of a policy that Trump first sought to implement a week after taking office in January.
The Supreme Court’s action means that the ban will now go fully into effect for people from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen seeking to enter the United States. The ban also includes people from North Korea and certain governments officials from Venezuela, but the lower courts have already allowed these particular provisions to go into effect.
The ban was challenged in separate lawsuits by the state of Hawaii and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both set of challengers stated that the latest ban, like its predecessors, discriminates against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution and is not permissible under immigration laws.
Lower courts had previously limited the scope of the ban to people without either certain family connections to the United States or formal relationships with U.S.-based entities such as universities and resettlement agencies.
The Supreme Court said in two similar one-page orders that the lower courts ruling that partly blocked the latest ban should be put on hold while federal appeals courts in San Francisco and Richmond, Virginia weigh the cases. Both courts are due to hear arguments in those cases this week.
The Supreme Court also stated that the ban will remain in effect regardless of what the appeals courts rule, at least until the justices ultimately decide whether to take up the issue on the merits, which they are likely to do. The court’s order that the appeals court should decide the cases “with appropriate dispatch.”
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