A part of the travel ban—through a controversial executive order by President Donald Trump—that was stayed by US courts was on Monday (September 11) partially restored by US Supreme Court judge Anthony Kennedy. The court has done this at the request from the Trump administration. The judge temporarily blocked a ruling that placed restrictions on the travel ban, thereby effectively allowing parts of the ban to come into effect.
The restrictions that were removed from the San Francisco Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ order was regarding the blocking of the part where refugees who have formal assurances from resettlement agencies or are in the US Refugee Admissions Programme were stopped from entering Washington.
The temporary blockade by the Supreme Court, said the judge, was pending the receipt of a response from the state of Hawaii, reports agencies.
The Ninth Circuit appellate court had also blocked Trump’s ban on the entry of grandparents, aunts, uncles and other extended family members of a persons. This part has also been unblocked temporarily.
The Supreme Court was acting on a request for stay by Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall.
In his plea, Wall wrote: “Unlike students who have been admitted to study at an American university, workers who have accepted jobs at an American company, and lecturers who come to speak to an American audience, refugees do not have any freestanding connection to resettlement agencies, separate and apart from the refugee-admissions process itself, by virtue of the agencies’ assurance agreement with the government.
“Nor can the exclusion of an assured refugee plausibly be thought to ‘burden’ a resettlement agency in the relevant sense,” he wrote.
With the Ninth Circuit’s decision set to take effect at 11.30 a.m. on Tuesday, the Supreme Court gave its stay within two hours of Wall’s request.
This was the second court ‘victory’ for Trump. In June the Supreme Court had allowed the administration to temporarily block people from six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the US.
—India Legal Bureau