US Supreme Court upholds Trump travel ban

5-4 ruling hands president ‘one of his
biggest wins since taking office’

One-Minute Read

The court accepted 5-4 the government’s argument that the ban
was within the president’s power to craft national security policy
and his authority to “suspend entry of aliens into the United
States”. The court rejected claims that it was discriminatory and
motivated by religious hostility.

The ban targets travellers from Syria, Iran, Libya, Yemen and
Somalia, and also includes limited sanctions against North Korean
and Venezuelan citizens.

The vote, which brings to an end more than a year of legal back-and-forth, is “a significant victory
for the administration and a blow to anti-discrimination advocates”
reports The Guardian. The Independent said the court had handed the
president “one of his biggest wins since taking office”.

The administration has strongly denied this is a Muslim ban, but
Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Immigrant Rights Project, said that the ruling was one of the
Court’s “great failures”, and likened the decision to the ruling
which upheld Japanese-American internment during World War Two.

CNBC says the case has been “central” to the
Trump administration’s immigration policy, “presenting a key test
of the president’s campaign promise to restrict immigration and
secure America’s borders”.

The administration has faced stinging criticism over its policy
of separating immigrant families crossing the US-Mexican border,
but the BBC’s Anthony Zurcher says this ruling marks a
“significant victory for Mr Trump – and for presidential power to
set immigration policy in general – albeit by the narrowest of
margins”.

The decision once again highlights the Republican slant on the
Supreme Court and follows a number of highly contentious rulings
this week which have split along party lines.

On Monday the court voted 5-4 to uphold gerrymandered election
maps in Texas, ignoring evidence that the maps were drawn to
minimise the power of minority voters, also declining to take up a
North Carolina gerrymandering case.

Both of decisions “damage voting rights” says David Leonhardt in
the New York Times, and were only made possible “because of the
unprecedented actions of Republican senators” who blocked Barack
Obama’s choice to fill the vacant Supreme Court seat in the run up
to the 2016 presidential election, ensuring the 5-4 Republican
majority.

This has prompted University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck to write that the court’s current
term, “is shaping up to be one of its most ideologically one-sided
(and consistently conservative) sessions in a long time.”