New York Times

Trump Travel Ban Hearing Closes Oral Arguments for 2017 Term

April 25, 2018

by Adam Liptak

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will hear a challenge on Wednesday to President Trump’s latest effort to limit travel from countries said to pose a threat to the nation’s security. The case, a major test of presidential power, will require the justices to decide whether Mr. Trump’s campaign promises to impose a “Muslim ban” were reflected in executive orders that restricted travel from several predominantly Muslims nations.

Just a week after he took office, President Trump issued his first travel ban, causing chaos at the nation’s airports and starting a cascade of lawsuits and appeals. Fifteen months later, after two revisions of the ban and a sustained losing streak in the lower courts, the Supreme Court took up the case in its last scheduled argument of the term. A decision is expected by late June.

The case, Trump v. Hawaii, No. 17-965, concerns Mr. Trump’s third and most considered bid to make good on his campaign promise to secure the nation’s borders. Challengers to the latest ban, issued as a presidential proclamation in September, said it was tainted by religious animus and not adequately justified by national security concerns.

But the administration said the third order was the product of careful study by several agencies of the security and information-sharing practices of nations around the world. Mr. Trump’s lawyers urged the courts to ignore Mr. Trump’s statements and Twitter posts and to focus solely on the text of the proclamation and the process that produced it.

Mr. Trump’s first travel ban, issued in January 2017, was promptly blocked by courts around the nation. A second version, issued two months later, fared little better, though the Supreme Court allowed part of it go into effect in June when it agreed to hear the Trump administration’s appeals from two appeals court losses. But the Supreme Court dismissed those appeals in October after the second ban expired.

The current ban initially restricted travel from eight nations — Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad, Venezuela and North Korea — six of which were predominantly Muslim. Chad was recently removed from the list.

The restrictions vary in their details, but, for the most part, citizens of the countries are prohibited from immigrating to the United States, and many are barred from working, studying or vacationing here.

In December, in a sign that the Supreme Court may uphold the latest order, the court allowed it to go into effect as the case moved forward. The decision effectively overturned a compromise in place since last June, when the court said travelers with connections to the United States could continue to travel here notwithstanding restrictions in an earlier version of the ban.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the December ruling.

Hawaii, several individuals and a Muslim group challenged the latest ban’s limits on travel from the predominantly Muslim nations; they did not object to the portions concerning North Korea and Venezuela. They prevailed before a Federal District Court there and before a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco.

The appeals court ruled that Mr. Trump had exceeded the authority that Congress had given him over immigration and had violated a part of the immigration laws barring discrimination in the issuance of visas.

In a separate decision that is not directly before the justices, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., blocked the ban on different grounds, saying it violated the Constitution’s prohibition of religious discrimination.

The Supreme Court said it would consider both the statutory and constitutional questions when it agreed to hear the case.

Lawyers for the challengers have said Mr. Trump’s own statements provided powerful evidence of anti-Muslim animus. The latest order, they said, was infected by the same flaws as the previous ones.