SCOTUS Delivers Trump Win: Lifts Most of Block on Travel Ban

The Supreme Court mostly lifted a pair of injunctions on President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban Monday — a move several legal experts said bodes well for the White House when the court makes a final determination on the constitutionality of the executive order in October.

“Obviously a win for the Trump administration,” said Bill Otis, adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University. “The court has put aside significant parts of the bar lower courts had placed on the president’s executive order.”

The court did, however, carve out an exception for individuals with familial or business ties to the U.S.

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The ban “may not be enforced against foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States,” the court wrote in its ruling.

“The government’s interest in enforcing [the ban] and the executive’s authority to do so, are undoubtedly at their peak when there is no tie between the foreign national and the United States,” the court said.

The president himself hailed the decision as a victory for national security.

“Today’s unanimous Supreme Court decision is a clear victory for our national security,” Trump said in a statement, “It allows the travel suspension for the six terror-prone countries and the refugee suspension to become largely effective.”

Otis said the early decision “suggests, although it does not at this stage prove,” that the justices on the Supreme Court saw merit in a dissenting opinion from Judge Paul V. Niemeyer in the 4th Circuit’s block of the ban.

“Judge Niemeyer thought it would be odd and overstepping for the courts to overturn an admittedly valid exercise of presidential power to protect national security based simply on how press reports characterized the president’s subjective attitude,” Otis said.

Other legal experts agreed the justices’ unanimous decision to undercut the injunctions issued by lower courts suggests the high court will ultimately affirm most of the ban.

“The justices did not delve into the president’s Twitter account, nor did they parse his campaign statements. Instead, they stressed the ‘government’s compelling need to provide for the nation’s security.'”

It’s “a huge victory for the president. That is a slap in the face to the 9th Circuit and the 4th Circuit,” former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova said Monday on “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

“I really think that inevitably this will be another 7-to-2 case or 9-to-nothing. The reason is very simple: the power of the president over foreign policy — and, as an adjunct of that, the power over immigration and to determine who comes into the country — is, in fact, almost plenary,” diGenova said.

“The way the 4th Circuit and the 9th Circuit had thought to couch this in terms of religious freedom is absolutely nonsensical. This is about controlling our borders and security. So I don’t have any doubts that the president will win on the merits, ultimately,” diGenova said. “And it will be quite a big victory because the 9th Circuit and the 4th Circuit are simply sophomoric opinions poorly written, and they read like political screeds.”

DiGenova said that the lower courts’ rulings were an “embarrassment to the federal judiciary. They smack of political rhetoric. They are childish in their analysis. They are quite ignorant and purposefully ignorant by avoiding citing key federal statutes and key Supreme Court rulings.”

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Josh Blackman, associate professor of law at the South Texas College of Law, noted that the key difference between the Supreme Court decision Monday and the previous pair of lower court decisions was the lack of attempt to read the tea leaves of Trump’s public comments.

“The Supreme Court did what the lower court judges would not … the justices did not delve into the president’s Twitter account, nor did they parse his campaign statements,” Blackman said. “Instead, they stressed the ‘government’s compelling need to provide for the nation’s security.'”

Blackman agreed the move is a strong sign the Supreme Court will uphold the executive order and the power of the president to make determinations on immigration based on national security concerns.

“I agree with Justice Thomas that the court, without dissent, strongly suggested that the government ‘is likely to succeed’ when the case is argued in October,” Blackman said.