The Supreme Court announced today that they would hear Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project. This is the Muslim ban, Travel ban case.
In it’s decision to hear the case, the court also lifted the temporary injunctions granted by the circuit courts against Trump’s Muslim ban:
We grant the Government’s applications to stay the injunctions, to the extent the injunctions prevent enforcement of §2(c) with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.
This means students, employees, spouses, parents, children etc. returning to the US should not be affected by the ban. But, those who do not have such a pre-existing relationship, can now be refused a visa or prevented from entering the US by Trump’s order.
In practice, this likely means first-time visa applicants from the six countries will be rejected right away, and first time visitors turned away at the border (even if they have valid visas).
Refugees will almost certainly be turned away, since most won’t have a pre-existing relationship that would exempt them from the ban.
Hold on though, there’s a dissent…
JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom JUSTICE ALITO and JUSTICE GORSUCH join, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
“I agree with the Court that the preliminary injunctions entered in these cases should be stayed, although I would stay them in full...”
These three justices want the Muslim/Travel ban to go into effect exactly as Trump wants.
So yeah, Gorsuch is on the Alito/Thomas team.
He’s as dreadful as we feared he would be.
— Cross-posted at NotMeUs.org and TheProgressiveWing.com | @subirgrewal