Supreme Court Temporarily Lifts Restrictions on Travel Ban

The Supreme Court on Monday approved the Trump administration’s request to temporarily lift travel ban restrictions, The Hill reports.

The court temporarily blocked part of last week’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that barred the government from prohibiting refugees that have formal assurances from resettlement agencies or are in the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program from entering the U.S.

Justice Anthony Kennedy said that part of the decision is stayed pending the receipt of a response from the state of Hawaii. The Supreme Court’s decision came less than two hours after Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall filed a request for a stay.

Last week, the 9th Circuit also blocked the government from banning grandparents, aunts, uncles and other extended family members of a person in the U.S. from entering the country, The Hill adds.

The administration added that it decided not to fight the “close-family aspect of the district court’s modified injunction.” Wall said in his request to the court that that part of the ruling was “less stark” than the nullification of the order’s refugee provision.

“Unlike students who have been admitted to study at an American university, workers who have accepted jobs at an American company, and lecturers who come to speak to an American audience, refugees do not have any freestanding connection to resettlement agencies, separate and apart from the refugee-admissions process itself, by virtue of the agencies’ assurance agreement with the government,” Wall wrote.

The court was forced to act fast, given that the 9th Circuit decision was set to take effect at 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday.

Wall argued that allowing the 9th Circuit’s ruling to go forward would force the government to “change course” on orders it began implementing on June 29 and invite “precisely the type of uncertainty and confusion that the government has worked diligently to avoid.”

The Hill adds that the Supreme Court handed Trump a partial win in June when it allowed the administration to temporarily block people from six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. However, the court carved out an exemption for people with a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the country.

The federal district court judge in Hawaii who blocked Trump’s order in March further weakened it in July by including grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins of people in the U.S and refugees working with resettlement agencies in the definition of what constitutes a bona fide relationship.