Supreme Court Upholds Travel Ban in Trump v. Hawaii Ruling

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of President Trump and his immigration policy across the board in a 5-4 decision on Tuesday, holding that the permanent entry restrictions from various terror-prone nations codified in Presidential Proclamation 9645 is fully consistent with Congress’s Immigration and Nationality Act as well as the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that admission and exclusion of foreign nationals is a “fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the Government’s political departments largely immune from judicial control,” quoting from an earlier case, and that the president has extraordinarily broad discretion under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f) to exclude aliens when he believes doing so is in the nation’s interests.

President Trump’s policy is permitted by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution, because Presidential Proclamation 9645 provides a religion-neutral explanation for the policy that is facially legitimate, rejecting plaintiffs’ arguments that the policy advanced an impermissible religious purpose.

The case is Trump v. Hawaii, No. 17-965 in the Supreme Court of the United States.

SCOTUS on immigration restrictions: A sovereign republic – if you can keep it, Daniel Horowitz, June 26, 2018:

Those who still believe we are a sovereign nation won an important victory today in Trump v. Hawaii, but the war in the lower courts will continue unless Congress shuts it down....

What does this all mean? It’s time to fight the lower courts

Overall, the opinion from the majority was stronger than I expected. However, I doubt this is going to shut down most of the immigration lawsuits in the lower courts. This is why Thomas’s concurrence is so important. Until we shut down the lower courts’ terrible practice of placing nationwide injunctions on national security policies, a power they manifestly do not have, the Left will continue shopping these cases to the same capricious lower court judges.

Conservatives in Congress should immediately press for stripping the lower courts of power over immigration or at least clarifying that they have no power to impose universal nationwide injunctions beyond the individual plaintiffs.

The president is now vindicated in the plain language of a statute that should never have been held up in court for almost a year and a half. He’d be wise to invoke 1182(f) and shut down cross-border migration entirely. Based on the universal outcry of the dangers to migrants and Americans, Trump would easily meet the rational-basis test established by the chief justice.

However, past history should caution us about complacency. These lawsuits are the legal version of a circus, and the victory was a narrow one at 5-4. Unless Congress and the president begin asserting their power over sovereignty, the lower courts will continue chipping away, and the Supreme Court will gradually adopt their approach in the ever-evolving, one-directional ratchet of progressive jurisprudence.

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Supreme Court Upholds Travel Ban in Trump v. Hawaii Ruling