Supreme Court Allows President Trump’s Travel Ban To Go Fully Into Effect

The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to fully enforce a ban on travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries. This is the first time justices have allowed any edition of the ban to go forward in its entirety.

The justices, with two dissenting votes, said Monday that the policy can take full effect even as legal challenges against it make their way through the courts.

The action suggests the high court could uphold the latest version of the ban that Trump announced in September.

The ban applies to travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Lower courts had said people from those nations with a claim of a “bona fide” relationship with someone in the United States could not be kept out of the country. Grandparents, cousins and other relatives were among those courts said could not be excluded.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, will be holding arguments on the legality of the ban this week.