Latest in travel ban
With the Supreme Court scheduled to hear oral argument on April 25 in Trump v. Hawaii, now is a good time to consider the government’s reliance on the president’s Article II power as a legal justification for the third iteration of President Trump’s travel ban.
On Sept. 24, 2017, President Trump signed a proclamation, better known as “travel ban 3.0,” which would have denied entry to aliens from six predominantly-Muslim nations.
On Monday, the Supreme Court’s tumultuous 2016 term is scheduled to draw to an end. But will it? All of the briefing in the travel ban litigation has been filed, and the cases are ready for the Court’s ruling. There are (at least) six possible options for resolving this matter.
1. Hold a Special Session in July
Reading the Fourth Circuit’s en banc opinion in International Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump, one would think the court’s analysis amounts to routine application of well-settled precedent. But a close examination reveals the decision to be anything but.
During oral arguments in the Fourth and Ninth Circuits, judges attempted to draw analogies between President Trump's travel ban and Korematsu v. United States (1944).
Yesterday, thirteen judges of the Fourth Circuit sitting en banc heard argument in IRAP v. Trump. Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall handled with aplomb an hour of blistering questions from about seven or eight judges on the red-hot panel. Omar Jadwat, arguing for the ACLU, also faced an hour of questions, though only two or three judges seemed to challenge his position.
Yesterday afternoon, the Fourth Circuit, sitting en banc, heard two hours of argument in IRAP v. Trump. At issue was District Judge Theodore Chuang’s nationwide preliminary injunction enjoining enforcement of Section 2(c) of Executive Order 13,780, President Trump’s revised March 6 travel ban order.