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WASHINGTON / Reuters
US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy provided a temporary reprieve for President Trump’s order blocking most refugees from entering the United States, putting on hold a lower court’s ruling loosening the prohibition. Kennedy’s action gave the nine justices more time to consider the Justice Department’s challenge filed to the lower court’s decision allowing entry to refugees from around the world if they had a formal offer from a resettlement agency. The full Supreme Court could act within days.
The Justice Department opted not to appeal another part of last Thursday’s ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that related to Trump’s ban on travelers from six Muslim-majority nations. The 9th Circuit ruling broadened the number of people with exemptions to the ban to include grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins of legal US residents.
Without Kennedy’s intervention, the appeals court decision would have gone into effect on Tuesday. Kennedy asked refugee ban challengers to file a response to the Trump administration’s filing by noon (1600 GMT) on Tuesday. Under the 9th US Circuit’s ruling, up to 24,000 additional refugees would become eligible to enter the United States than otherwise would be allowed, according to the administration.
Trump’s March 6 order banned travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days and locked out most aspiring refugees for 120 days in a move the Republican president argued was needed to prevent terrorist attacks. The order, which replaced a broader January one that was blocked by federal courts, was one of the most contentious acts of his presidency. Critics called it an unlawful “Muslim ban†that made good on Trump’s promise as a candidate of “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.â€
The broader question of whether the travel ban discriminates against Muslims in violation of the US Constitution, as lower courts previously ruled, will be argued before the Supreme Court on Oct. 10. The Supreme Court in June partially revived the order after its provisions were blocked by lower courts. But the justices said a ban could be applied only to those without a “bona fide†relationship to people or entities in the United States.