The Supreme Court gave the Trump administration’s revised travel ban its first legal victory on Monday, agreeing unanimously to consider the ban this October and allowing the ban to go partially into effect until then.
Two lower courts recently ruled the ban unconstitutional and blocked its implementation. But the government will now be able to enforce the travel ban “with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States” until the Supreme Court hears the case later this year.
“When it comes to refugees who lack any such connection to the United States,” the majority opinion reads, “for the reasons we have set out, the balance tips in favor of the Government’s compelling need to provide for the Nation’s security.”
The White House released a statement from President Trump celebrating the decision:
The opinion, from which none of the court’s liberal justices dissented, amounts to a nearly total reversal of the lower courts’ stay, as the criteria for a “bona fide relationship” are relatively strict.
Justice Clarence Thomas argued, in a partially concurring, partially dissenting opinion joined by Justices Alito and Gorsuch, that the ban should been reinstated entirely:
Thomas also questioned whether the court’s temporary remedy would prove “workable.”
