- President Donald Trump's travel ban is being argued before the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
- The justices will decide whether Trump has the authority to broadly restrict travel, and whether the ban violates the Constitution's Establishment Clause.
- The justices are expected to issue a ruling in June.
President Donald Trump's travel ban, one of the most controversial executive orders to come from his presidency so far, is being argued before the Supreme Court on Wednesday morning.
The court is considering the third iteration of Trump's ban, which he issued in September 2017, after lower courts struck down each of Trump's previous two versions.
The third ban imposed restrictions on travelers coming to the United States from eight countries: Syria, Iran, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela. But the plaintiffs didn't include North Korea and Venezuela in their challenge, and the Trump administration removed Chad from the list in recent weeks.
At issue are two main questions:
- whether Trump has the authority under federal immigration law to implement such travel restrictions, and
- whether or not the travel ban violates the Constitution's Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from favoring one religion over the other.
The Supreme Court will post audio of the oral arguments on its website Wednesday afternoon, a rarity because the case is so high-profile. The justices are expected to issue a ruling in June.
What the Trump administration is arguing
It has also argued that the ban does not discriminate against Muslims, as it includes two countries without majority-Muslim populations: North Korea and Venezuela.
Attorneys for the Trump administration have argued that the travel ban has precedent — previous presidents have issued executive orders that restricted travel from certain countries during international conflicts or other national security crises.
The government cited decisions from former presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, who restricted travel from Iran during the hostage crisis in 1980 and from Cuba in 1985, respectively.
The Trump administration has also argued that it imposed the travel restrictions not to punish countries or discriminate against their citizens, but to "encourage" the nations to improve their data collection practices on their travelers.
What the challengers are arguing
The challengers — which include the state of Hawaii, the Muslim Association of Hawaii, and two unidentified plaintiffs — have argued that Trump's third version of the ban essentially does the same as the previous two: discriminates against Muslim travelers in an effort to fulfill Trump's 2016 campaign promise to bar Muslims from entering the country.
Plaintiffs have also cited not only the previous two travel bans, but Trump's 2016 campaign rhetoric, and multiple tweets since the beginning of his presidency that they argue exhibit Trump's religious animosity toward Muslims.
Lower courts, including two federal appeals courts, have generally sided with the plaintiffs in ruling that Trump's travel ban has been similar in its intention and implementation to the first two travel bans, which barred nationals of majority-Muslim countries from entering the US.
US District Court Judge Derrick Watson, for instance, wrote in an early opinion that Trump's third travel ban would cause "irreparable harm" and violate federal immigration law were it to take effect.
"[The travel ban] suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor: it lacks sufficient findings that the entry of more than 150 million nationals from six specified countries would be 'detrimental to the interests of the United States,'" Watson wrote, adding that the ban "plainly discriminates based on nationality."
But one recurring question the challengers have faced — and will likely face on Wednesday — has been whether the plaintiffs adequately demonstrated to the courts that Trump has exceeded his lawful authority in implementing the ban.
The challengers concede that the Immigration and Nationality Act grants the president broad powers to restrict the entry of certain travelers, but they have argued that the Trump administration has "grossly" exceeded its authority by placing indefinite restrictions on a group of countries that comprises roughly 150 million people.
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source http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-travel-ban-supreme-court-arguments-2018-4
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