SCOTUS Seems to Support Trump’s Travel Ban

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Summary: The Supreme Court appears to be leaning in favor of upholding President Donald Trump’s travel ban. 

The Supreme Court indicated on Wednesday that they were likely to uphold President Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban, according to Reuters.

  

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The Supreme Court currently has five conservative judges and four liberals, and it appears that the conservative judges will prevail in this ruling.

Earlier this year, Trump’s administration passed a travel ban that targetted a few Muslim-majority countries, and it elicited a strong reaction from critics who said that the ban was discriminatory based on religion.

Trump’s travel ban was changed to address the public concerns, and it is now on its third reiteration. The White House has denied being discriminatory and said that the travel bans were necessary to combat terrorism by Islamic extremists.

The current ban prohibits entry into the US from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Chief Justice John Roberts and swing-vote Justice Anthony Kennedy voted with the other conservative judges to uphold the legality of the ban.

The ban was challenged first by a judge in Hawaii who argued that Trump was violating federal immigration law by targetting the Muslim religion. The liberal judges on the Supreme Court sided with this argument, but the conservatives stated that this was not a Muslim ban as it only targetted 8% of the world’s Muslim population.

“If you look at what was done, it does not look at all like a Muslim ban,” Justice Samuel Alito said. “There are other justifications that jump out as to why these particular countries were put on the list.”

Kennedy said that this ban was not permanent and that its inclusion of a requirement to conduct ongoing reports about the targetted countries made it legal.

Trump’s detractors used the anti-Muslim statements  Trump made before he was president as proof that the travel ban was against the religion, but Trump’s lawyer Noel Francisco said that those comments were off-limits because he was not president when he made them. Kennedy questioned the logic of this but ultimately sided with the president in this case.

One of Trump’s major campaign promises was to fight bad immigration policies; and he has proposed building a wall between the US and Mexico, targetting illegal immigrants for deportation, and limiting legal immigration. Since he took office, he signed the executive order to ban travel from a few Muslim-majority countries, fought publicly online with Democrats to get funding for his border wall, and increased the number of raids by ICE, among other actions.

The court’s final decision in the travel ban matter is expected to be released in June.

In December, the Supreme Court leaned towards backing the Trump travel ban, 7-2, by allowing it to go into effect as the court decided on the legality of it.

• Second Judge Rules Against Trump Travel Ban 
• Trump’s Travel Ban to Be Replaced with Country-Specific Restrictions
• Federal Judge Halts Trump’s Third Travel Ban
• Supreme Court Allows Portions of Travel Ban to Be Enforced

What do you think of the travel ban? Let us know in the comments below.