The Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to enforce the latest version of the president’s “Muslim ban,” which restricts entry to the United States for nationals of eight countries, six of which are mostly Muslim.
The order is currently facing legal challenges in Hawaii and Maryland, where federal judges blocked the ban from going into effect in October. But yesterday’s (December 4) SCOTUS decision allows the federal government to lock out most citizens of Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, plus some government officials and their families from Venezuela.
The Court issued two unsigned orders that stay the judges’ decisions, allowing the travel ban to proceed while the cases wind through the lower courts. There is no explanation of the decision, but both orders include the following line: “Justice Ginsburg and Justice Sotomayor would deny the application.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions told press that the order was “a substantial victory for the safety and security of the American people,” per The New York Times. But immigrant advocates and Twitter users of color did not share that sentiment.
Further, major partisan gerrymandering cases are ongoing in Maryland, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. One particularly important one, espescially to the deliberation that we are going to do on Monday, is the one in Maryland. A group of Maryland voters filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on November 5, 2013 challenging the congressional redistricting plan enacted by the Democratic-controlled Maryland General Assembly following the 2010 Census.
In their amended complaint, plaintiffs claimed that Maryland’s 6th Congressional District was a partisan gerrymander that violated their representational rights guaranteed by Article I of the U.S. Constitution and their First Amendment right of political association. Until the 2011 redistricting, the Sixth District routinely sent a Republican to Congress; afterward, the district flipped, going to the Democratic side. Under the plaintiffs’ theory of the case, the Democratic-controlled legislature engineered this flip in an attempt to punish Republican voters for casting their ballots in favor of their preferred Republican candidates.
On August 24, 2016, the panel denied the state defendants’ motion to dismiss in a 2-1 decision, holding that the plaintiffs had adequately alleged a claim that they had been disfavored and punished for exercising their First Amendment rights. The parties are now proceeding with discovery, with a trial in the case expected in late summer or early fall 2017.
It’s interesting that you have such a current and substantial issue to back up your deliberation as well, it shows how connected the topics we discuss are. You also drew a good comparison that both issues contained the same statement despite there not being an explanation given. It’ll be fun to watch how the Maryland redistricting case goes and how they will redraw their maps.
It makes sense that the Supreme Court would allow the ban to take place since it is a mostly conservative bench. That being said, Trump predicted a similar court path for his decision to declare a national emergency to get border wall funding. With the ban, it seems like if the Trump administration can wait through all the lower courts, they stand their best shot with the Supreme Court. It will be interesting to see if that pattern holds again.
I think that a lot of what Trump wants to get done can be accomplished if he waits. If Trump is re-elected in 2020, he will have more time for cases to move through the lower courts, as Jake said. With so much gridlock (especially with the current administration), there is a lot of waiting before either party compromises anything. If the President manages to be re-elected, it is likely he will be able to pass much of his agenda.
Clearly the bench aligns more right as Jake said above, but still this is scary to think about as it seems that the only strong and more than competent left judge on the supreme court is in her 90s. But I do believe as long as the the dems continue their stretch of winning we will not be seeing that conservative bench being utlized and granted as much power.