The US Supreme Court has granted a request from the Donald Trump administration and temporarily blocked a ruling that placed restrictions on the Presidents travel ban, the media reported.
In an order signed by Justice Anthony Kennedy on Monday, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the part of the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that barred the government from prohibiting refugees that have formal assurances from resettlement agencies or are in the US Refugee Admissions Programme from entering Washington.
Kennedy said that part of the decision was stayed pending the receipt of a response from the state of Hawaii. The response is due on Tuesday, reports The Hill magazine.
In its ruling, the 9th Circuit also blocked the government from banning grandparents, aunts, uncles and other extended family members of a person in the US from entering the country.
The Supreme Court’s decision came less than two hours after Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall filed a request for a stay.
Wall said in his request to the court that that part of the ruling was “less stark” than the nullification of the order’s refugee provision.
“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.
The Supreme Court was forced to act fast, given that the 9th Circuit’s decision was set to take effect at 11.30 a.m. on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court handed Trump a partial win in June when it allowed the administration to temporarily block people from six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the US. But the court carved out an exemption for people with a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the country.
The federal district court judge in Hawaii who blocked Trump’s order in March further weakened it in July by including grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins of people in the US and refugees working with resettlement agencies in the definition of what constitutes a bona fide relationship.
The Trump administration’s travel ban blocks travellers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the US for 90 days.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in two cases that have been consolidated challenging the ban on October 10.
