The Supreme Court seemed poised to uphold President Donald Trump’s ban on travel to the U.S. by visitors from several Muslim-majority countries, giving the president a major victory on a signature and controversial policy.
In the court’s first full-blown consideration of a Trump order, the conservative justices who make up the court’s majority seemed unwilling to hem in a president who has invoked national security to justify restrictions on who can or cannot step on U.S. soil.
The justices in December allowed the ban to take full effect even as the legal fight over it continued, but now was the first time they took it up in open court. Trump’s tough stance on immigration was a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, and he rolled out the first version of the ban just a week after taking office, sparking chaos and protests at some airports.
The ban’s challengers almost certainly need either Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Anthony Kennedy on their side if the court is to strike down the policy that its opponents have labeled a Muslim ban.
But neither appeared receptive to arguments made by lawyer Neal Katyal, representing the ban’s opponents, that Trump’s rule stems from his campaign pledge to keep Muslims out of the country and is unlike immigration orders issued by any other president.
The room was packed for the court’s final arguments until October, and people waited in line for seats for days. “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda was in the audience. Demonstrators protesting the ban filled the area outside the building.
Some who oppose the ban have said courts should treat Trump differently from his predecessors. But that issue was raised only obliquely from the bench when Justice Elena Kagan talked about a hypothetical president who campaigned on an anti-Semitic platform and then tried to ban visitors from Israel.
When solicitor general Noel Francisco, defending the ban, started to answer that such a turn of events was extremely unlikely because of the two countries’ close relationship, Kagan stopped him. “This is an out-of-the-box kind of president in my hypothetical,” she said, to laughter.
“We don’t have those, Your Honor,” Francisco replied.
While there was discussion about Trump’s statements both as a candidate and as president, no justice specifically referenced his tweets on the subject, despite Katyal’s attempt to get them to focus on last fall’s retweets of inflammatory videos that stoked anti-Islam sentiment.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the most aggressive questioner of Francisco.
