UPDATED: March 14, 2025 4:43 p.m.
The Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday over the legality of former President Donald Trump’s ban on travel to the United States from several predominantly Muslim nations.
The high court held a contentious, hourlong oral argument in Washington in which justices weighed whether to uphold a lower court’s restriction on enforcing the policy while appeals courts weigh its merits.
The federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled against the ban in February, as did judges in Hawaii and Maryland. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia is expected to rule on the issue as soon as this week.
The travel ban, put in place last fall, has been blocked by lower courts. At issue for the Supreme Court is whether the justices will clear the way for it to go into force while its constitutionality is debated.
The policy restricts travel from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, and imposes slightly different restrictions on travelers and refugees from North Korea and Venezuela. The United States suspended its refugee program for nationals from 11 countries, including from Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It withdrew those suspensions for all countries except for Syria.
Challengers, mostly human rights groups, argued that the policy is essentially the same as the one Mr. Trump initially put forth last January, which was swiftly blocked in the lower courts. Federal judges have said they saw no real differences between the original version and the revisions, and the administration has since continued to defend the original version.
But the Justice Department argued that the courts had looked too closely at the terms of each version and had not taken into account additional features. These included a study commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security, which concluded that people from the affected countries were not a significant security threat and gave the administration pause.
“The president had full authority to perform his duties and to find a way to implement meaningful safeguards against the entry of would-be terrorists into this country,” Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco said.
Earlier on Monday, Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, one of the five-member conservative majority, asked whether the president had the power to restrict travel for national security reasons.
Fred L. O’Scanlon, the California-based lawyer representing the state and several civil rights organizations, conceded that a future president could only “single out Muslim-majority countries for adverse treatment” and argued that Mr. Trump exceeded his authority.
Mr. O’Scanlon pointed out that the global terrorism study relied on by the administration concluded that as far as the eight countries subject to bans, “constraints and distortions in the availability of certain data concerning their nationals frustrate efforts to perform an accurate assessment.”
Much of the argument was consumed with battles over national security and whether the courts have the right to second-guess the president on security matters.
Mr. O’Scanlon argued that Mr. Trump’s policy amounted to “animus” — or ill-will — toward Muslims, noting that “the rhetorical pedigree of the travel ban” gave “all the historical indicia of animus.”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. sharply pushed back. “You’re saying that the president’s decision is infected by impermissible animus and you’re pointing to his campaign statements,” Justice Alito said. “Well, what if he were really obsessed with Animists or Assyrians or Taoists or Shintoists or Sikhs?”
The policy’s implementation in separate presidential orders last September replaced rules put in place by Mr. Trump in his first days in office.
Last year, a divided federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., allowed an earlier version of the policy to expand, but had also added a provision for citizens of affected countries who want to come to the U.S. as students or visitors to first make their case to a U.S. consular officer, rather than only being able to do so at the airport or port of entry.
Charles J. Cooper, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs and the No. 1 immigration target, Hirah Mirza, asked why that provision did not now apply to the revised policy.
“If the court puts its imprimatur on that subsequently published aspect of the process, what prevents the president in the future from once again inserting blanket bans that he thinks are warranted and then allowing those exemptions only through some future administrative process?” Mr. Cooper asked.
Melissa A. Binder, an assistant to the solicitor general, responded that there was no current effort to roll any of the exemptions back. “The policy is fully in force today, and many thousands of foreign nationals have already been admitted to the United States pursuant to the policy without any difficulties,” she said.
Later on Monday, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch went to a National Press Club lunch, while Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined Justice Elena Kagan for lunch at Le Bernardin in Manhattan.
Chad in December removed itself from a terrorist watch list, after the State Department certified that it had improved its counterterrorism efforts. Still, current officials say it should remain on the travel ban list until it can do more.
The case is No. 17-966, Trump v. Hawaii.
What is at issue for the Supreme Court in regards to the policy restricting travel from several predominantly Muslim nations?
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