Supreme Court Rejects Trump Administration’s Travel Ban Interpretation

Grandparents and other relatives of US residents will be allowed to come from six majority-Muslim countries.

Miguel Juarez Lugo/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s strict interpretation of the court’s travel ban directive on Wednesday, allowing grandparents and other relatives of US residents to come to the country from the six majority-Muslim countries covered by the ban.

On June 26, the court had ruled that President Donald Trump’s travel ban could go into effect while the court reviews the legal challenge to the ban. But it created an exception for people with “bona fide relationships” to US residents. The Trump administration interpreted that language to refer only to immediate family members. When a federal judge in Hawaii broadened that interpretation to include grandparents and more distant relatives, the administration requested clarification from the Supreme Court. But on Wednesday, the Supreme Court denied that request, upholding a ruling from federal Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii. The upshot: The ban will not apply to grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles and other family members.

But in the same ruling, the court gave the Trump administration a partial win. It is allowing the administration to block many refugees from entering the country, overruling Judge Watson’s move to let them in. The Supreme Court sent the issue down to a federal appeals court in San Francisco to determine the details, such as whether an assurance from a resettlement agency constitutes a bona fide relationship. (Three justicesā€”Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomasā€”said they would have blocked Watson’s order entirely.) 

This means the 24,000 refugees the government says has been given such assurances will not be able to get into the country without some other connectionā€”at least until the appeals court makes a determination. Meanwhile, another 175,000 refugees are currently waiting to be connected with a resettlement agency. In a brief to the Supreme Court, the state of Hawaii, which is suing the federal government over the travel ban, noted that “many of those refugees…will be unable to demonstrate any other form of bona fide relationship with an American party, meaning that they will be absolutely barred from entering the country in the next several months.” 

Trump’s travel bans have been repeatedly blocked by the courts, until the Supreme Court ruled last month that the president’s revised executive order could go partially into effect. The biggest showdown over the ban will come in October, when the high court is set to hear the case. 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate