Executive Order 13780

Implementing a remedial decree always presents challenges. The Supreme Court’s partial stay of lower court injunctions of President Trump’s revised Refugee Executive Order (EO) is an acute example of this venerable truth. The Court’s effort to do equity provided that to be subject to ordinary visa-processing (not the pause in admission to the U.S. decreed by the EO), a noncitizen abroad had to demonstrate a “credible claim” to a “bona fide relationship” to a U.S. person or a U.S. entity.

On Saturday, I sketched out six possible outcomes of the Supreme Court’s review of the travel ban cases. The Justices chose door number seven. In an unsigned, per curiam opinion, the Court granted certiorari in both IRAP v. Trump (4th Cir.) and Hawaii v. Trump (9th Cir.), with arguments scheduled for October.

Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit, in a per curiam opinion, affirmed in part a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration's revised travel ban issued by a federal district court in Hawaii v. Trump. The decision comes on the heels of the Fourth Circuit’s decision in IRAP v.

This is the final part of a five-part series on the Fourth Circuit’s recent en banc decision in IRAP v. Trump. Part I analyzed how the court considered pre- and post-inauguration statements. Part II analyzed how the court marshals the Supreme Court’s precedents concerning standing, reviewability of immigration decisions, and the Establishment Clause. In Part III, I analyzed the concurring opinions of Judges Keenan, Thacker, and Wynn.