The U.S. Supreme Court has given Donald Trump a rare victory by allowing his travel ban to go into full effect, targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries.
The court, with two of the nine justices dissenting, granted the administration’s request to lift two injunctions imposed by lower courts on the full application of the travel ban. Legal challenges continue in lower courts.
The ban in its current form applies to travellers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, all of which Trump’s administration argue constitute a security threat to the United States.
Trump’s ban also banned travellers from North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela, but lower courts had allowed these provisions to operate unchallenged.
Lower courts had argued that the travel ban was inherently flawed, claiming that people from nations on the ban list with “bona fide” connections in the United States could not legally be banned from travelling there. As with Trump’s last attempt at a travel ban, it has also been widely accused of specifically targeting Muslims – hence the popular designation of ‘Muslim ban’.
We’ll keep you posted.
