NBC
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, upheld President Donald Trump’s restriction on travel to the United States from a handful of Muslim countries on Tuesday, giving the White House its first high court victory on the merits of a presidential initiative.
After a series of federal court rulings invalidated or scaled back earlier versions of the travel ban, the decision is a big win for the administration and ends 15 months of legal battles over a key part of Trump’s immigration policy, which opponents attacked as a dressed-up form of the Muslim ban that Trump promised during his 2016 campaign.
Imposed last September by presidential proclamation, the latest version maintains limits on granting visas to travelers from five of the seven countries covered by the original executive order on travel — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. It lifts restrictions on visitors from Sudan, and it adds new limits on North Korea and Venezuela.
Chad was part of the proclamation but was taken off the list in April after the White House said it met enhanced visa security requirements. Iraq was listed in the original travel ban imposed last year but was removed in the second version.
The state of Hawaii, three of its residents, and a Muslim-American group challenged the new restrictions, and a federal judge blocked enforcement. But the Supreme Court lifted the stay last December, and the government has been carrying it out in full ever since.
The American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday that it’s “not the first time the Court has been wrong.”
The Trump administration argued that this version of the travel ban is different, because it was imposed only after the administration surveyed more than 200 countries for their effectiveness in providing information about the backgrounds of visa applicants and success in fighting terrorism.
The Justice Department said the Constitution and federal laws give the president broad authority to suspend or restrict entry into the country when he deems it to be in the nation’s interest. While immigration law doesn’t require the president to spell out detailed findings before he invokes the authority, the government said, the September proclamation was more detailed than any previous order limiting travel.
But Hawaii and the other challengers said federal law gives the president power to ban only foreign nationals who share some characteristic making them harmful to the U.S.
The travel ban was flawed, they said, because it restricted entry by 150 million people who share nothing in common but nationality. They also said the proclamation was based on religious animus, citing frequent promises from Trump, as a candidate and as president, to impose a Muslim ban.
The first executive order on travel, announced in February 2017, caused chaos at major airports when border officials refused to admit travelers who were in flight when the rules went into effect. It was quickly blocked by the courts.
Enforcement of a second travel ban, issued about a month later, was also stopped by lower court judges. The Supreme Court then allowed it to be enforced except for visa applicants with family or other close U.S. connections, but the revised version expired before it was to be the subject of full blown Supreme Court review last fall.