U.S. Supreme Court accepts travel ban case, allows Trump’s order to partly take effect

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided to review lower court rulings halting the implementation of President Donald Trump's travel ban, allowing his order to take effect in part.

Trump's Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on preliminary injunction rulings made by courts in the Fourth and Ninth circuits and to stay such injunctions. On June 26, the Supreme Court accepted the cases and allowed the Trump administration to temporarily prevent the entry of foreign nationals from six countries if they have no ties to individuals or entities in the United States.

Trump issued an order in January and a revised one in March seeking to temporarily stop nationals from certain Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and Africa from coming to the United States, citing national security concerns. The updated March order applied to nationals from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It also attempted to halt the entry of refugees and to lower the number of refugees to be admitted in fiscal year 2017, from 110,000 to 50,000. One of the claims made against Trump's orders is that they are discriminatory toward Muslims.

 The government's interest in enforcing Section 2 of the order (which outlines the temporary suspension) and the executive's authority in that regard are "undoubtedly at their peak when there is no tie between the foreign national and the United States," said an unsigned opinion on behalf of the court.

To stop the government from enforcing the order against foreign nations without a connection to the United States "would appreciably injure its interests, without alleviating obvious hardship to anyone else," the court said.

Still, Trump's directive "may not be enforced against foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States," the court said. 

Trump called the Supreme Court's decision a "clear victory for our national security" and said he was "particularly gratified that the Supreme Court's decision was 9-0."

"It allows the travel suspension for the six terror-prone countries and the refugee suspension to become largely effective," Trump said in a statement.

The Department of Homeland Security also issued a statement saying the Supreme Court had allowed the department to "largely implement" Trump's order.

"The granting of a partial stay of the circuit injunctions with regard to many aliens abroad restores to the executive branch crucial and long-held constitutional authority to defend our national borders," the statement said, adding that the implementation would be done professionally and "with clear and sufficient public notice."

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch partly concurred and dissented. In an opinion, Thomas, joined by Alito and Gorsuch, said that he would have stayed in full the preliminary injunctions and allowed the Trump orders to proceed.

"Today's compromise will burden executive officials with the task of deciding — on peril of contempt — whether individuals from the six affected nations who wish to enter the United States have a sufficient connection to a person or entity in this country," Thomas wrote. 

Until the case is fully resolved, the court's June 26 decision will "invite a flood of litigation" related to the determination of what exactly amounts to a "bona fide relationship," who has credible claims, and whether such relationships were created just to avoid entry denial, Thomas said.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case in October.

This is the first bit of good news for Trump, who has been trying to keep this promise since taking off. As such, we move this promise to In the Works.