The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to President Donald Trump by allowing his latest travel ban targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries to go into full effect even as legal challenges continue in lower courts.
The ruling is an indication that the Trump administration’s third travel ban could be able to stand.
The court, with two of the nine justices dissenting, granted his administration’s request to lift two injunctions imposed by lower courts that had partially blocked the ban, which is the third version of a contentious policy that Trump first sought to implement a week after taking office in January.
The justices, with two dissenting votes, said Monday that the policy can take full effect even as legal challenges against it make their way through the courts.
Victory: The Supreme Court justice handed the president a significant victory on Monday
The action suggests the high court could uphold the latest version of the ban that Trump announced in September.
The ban applies to travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Lower courts had said people from those nations with a claim of a “bona fide” relationship with someone in the United States could not be kept out of the country. Grandparents, cousins and other relatives were among those courts said could not be excluded.
President Donald Trump, alongside US Senator Orrin Hatch (L), Republican of Utah, meets with LDS President Henry B. Eyring (2nd R) and Russel Nelson (R), President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, both of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, at LDS Welfare Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, December 4, 2017. His administration’s immigration order targets six Muslim-majority nations
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor would have left the lower court orders in place.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, will be holding arguments on the legality of the ban this week.
Both courts are dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expects those courts to reach decisions “with appropriate dispatch.”
Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.
Lower courts had blocked implementation pending judicial review.
The ban blocks visitors and migrants from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and North Korea.
But the government doesn’t expect to get visitors from highly secluded North Korea, the L.A. Times noted.
Under a June Supreme Court ruling, the administration was granted latitude to to deny entry to immigrants from the Muslim-majority nation, but not to those with family here or a ‘credible claim of a bona fide relationship with person or entity in the United States.’
The court victory follows earlier struggles for the administration’s legal team, which saw lower courts delay implementation of the second version of the ban.
The administration cited the president’s broad authority to control immigration and national security.
Federal court judges in Maryland and Hawaii had blocked portions of a ban in October pending legal challenges.