The U.S. Supreme Court is set to adjourn on Wednesday over President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. The justices are going to hear a challenge to the lawfulness of his travel ban targeting people from several Muslim-majority countries.
According to Reuters, the case represents a test of the limits of presidential power. Trump’s policy, which was announced in September, blocks entry into the United States of most people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.
Chad was also on the list but Trump lifted those restrictions on April 10.
Until now, the high court has never ruled against the travel ban as well as other major Trump immigration policies, including his revoking of the protections for young immigrants brought into the U.S. illegally as children. The court has previously ruled in favor of Trump requests to undo lower court orders blocking those two policies, siding with him on the travel ban and opposing him on the Dreamers.
The court has the power to give Trump authority to take actions against states and cities that protect illegal immigrants.
Reuters reported that the conservative-majority Supreme Court is due to hear arguments on Wednesday on the third version of a travel ban policy which Trump first wanted to implement a week after taking office in January 2017, and issue a ruling by the end of June. The top challenger is the state of Hawaii, which argues that the ban violates federal immigration law and the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring one religion over another.
“Right now, the travel ban is keeping families apart. It is degrading our values by subjecting a specific set of people to be denigrated and marginalized,” Hawaii Lieutenant Governor Doug Chin said in an interview.
On December 4, the Supreme Court gave a hint that it may lean toward backing Trump when it approved the administration’s request to let the ban go into full effect while legal challenges played out.
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