The Supreme Court says grandparents are exempt from the travel ban

By S.M. | SAN DIEGO

OVER the weekend, the Department of Justice and opponents of Donald Trump’s travel ban filed nearly 100 pages of briefs to the Supreme Court regarding the scope of the justices’ ruling of June 26th permitting the president’s executive order to take partial effect. On July 19th, the justices responded with a curt, 64-word order giving something to each side. But they were again tight-lipped as to why, exactly, they had reached that decision. With the restrictions now in place on refugees and on travellers from six Muslim-majority countries, the Supreme Court has inserted itself into the details of Mr Trump’s travel ban without saying a word about its legality—or even explaining why it barred the government from applying the rules to foreigners who have a “bona fide relationship” with people or entities in America.

So what exactly did the justices do on July 19th? Three things. First, they denied Mr Trump’s lawyers’ request for “clarification” of their June 26th ruling as to what qualifies as a “bona fide relationship” and who counts as close family. Why the denial? That’s anyone’s guess. The request may have been seen as procedurally amiss, as the lawyers fighting the travel ban argued. Or the justices may have thought a clarification was unnecessary given what they were about to say—and not say. Without mentioning it, the court refused to block a federal district court judge’s ruling expanding the categories of family members exempted from the restrictions. The Trump administration had determined after the June 26th ruling that only immediate family members like parents and children would be admitted to the country, but the lower-court judge held that grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings-in-law were close family, too. So the Supreme Court effectively, but silently, endorsed this more expansive interpretation. Finally, the justices temporarily blocked the same judge’s expansion of the exemption to include some 24,000 “refugees covered by a formal assurance” from a resettlement agency. The bar on this class of refugee admissions should remain until the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decides the matter, the justices said.

The ruling is a win for family members in Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen seeking visas to visit relatives in America. It’s a loss for resettlement organisations that have already expended time, resources and energy planning for 24,000 aspiring refugees seeking shelter in America. And in the eyes of Joshua Matz, publisher of Take Care, a legal blog critical of Mr Trump, the ruling is a fraught gambit for the jurists of the Supreme Court. Despite the ban's "dumpster fire of immigration/security policy", judicial intervention into national-security policy is “very risky business”, Mr Matz writes, “well outside the court’s institutional competence”. The unreasoned decrees carry the feel of messages from the Delphic oracle, announcing truth without elaboration, but they have quite tangible effects on who is allowed into the country and who is not. Mr Matz notes that “[a]s the court steps further out on a limb partly of its own creation, the absence of public reasoning will become more problematic—and may expose the court to far greater risk” if someone they admit into the country carries out an act of terrorism.

The Supreme Court’s messages to the public regarding Mr Trump’s poorly justified, legally suspect travel ban have been noncommittal and, ostensibly, impartial. That above-the-fray perspective is the handiwork of a six-justice majority apparently seeking to dampen perceptions of the court’s politicisation. All but Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas—who would have let Mr Trump’s travel ban take full effect, and who would have kept the uncles and grandmas at bay—seem keen to steer a steady ship while the executive branch lists and founders. But in avoiding the most obvious dangers on the journey, the Supreme Court may find itself navigating other hazards in choppy and uncharted waters.