SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK

Court upholds travel ban

By Mark Sherman
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - A sharply divided Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld President Donald Trump's ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries, rejecting a challenge that it discriminated against Muslims or exceeded his authority. A dissenting justice said the outcome was a historic mistake.

The 5-4 decision Tuesday is a big victory for Trump on an issue that is central to his presidency, and the court's first substantive ruling on a Trump administration policy. The president quickly tweeted his reaction: "Wow!"

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion for the five conservative justices, including Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch.

Roberts wrote that presidents have substantial power to regulate immigration. He also rejected the challengers' claim of anti-Muslim bias.

But he was careful not to endorse either Trump's provocative statements about immigration in general or Muslims in particular, including Trump's campaign pledge to keep Muslims from entering the country.

"We express no view on the soundness of the policy," Roberts wrote.

The travel ban has been fully in place since December, when the justices put the brakes on lower court rulings that had ruled the policy out of bounds and blocked part of it from being enforced.

In a dissent she summarized in court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, "History will not look kindly on the court's misguided decision today, nor should it." Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan also dissented.

Sotomayor wrote that based on the evidence in the case "a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus." She said her colleagues in the majority arrived at the opposite result by "ignoring the facts, misconstruing our legal precedent and turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering the Proclamation inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens."

She likened the case to the discredited Korematsu v. U.S. decision that upheld the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Roberts responded in his opinion that "Korematsu has nothing to do with this case" and "was gravely wrong the day it was decided."

The travel ban was among the court's biggest cases this term and the latest in a string of 5-4 decisions in which the conservative side of the court, bolstered by the addition of Gorsuch last year, prevailed. Gorsuch was nominated by Trump after Republicans in the Senate refused to grant a hearing to federal appeals Judge Merrick Garland, who was appointed by Barack Obama with more than 10 months remaining in Obama's term.

The Trump policy applies to travelers from five countries with overwhelmingly Muslim populations - Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. It also affects two non-Muslim countries, blocking travelers from North Korea and some Venezuelan government officials and their families. A sixth majority Muslim country, Chad, was removed from the list in April after improving "its identity-management and information sharing practices," Trump said in a proclamation.

The administration had pointed to the Chad decision to show that the restrictions are premised only on national security concerns.

The challengers, though, argued that the court could not just ignore all that has happened, beginning with Trump's campaign tweets to prevent the entry of Muslims into the United States.

The travel ban has long been central to Trump's presidency.

He proposed a broad, all-encompassing Muslim ban during the presidential campaign in 2015, drawing swift rebukes from Republicans as well as Democrats. And within a week of taking office, the first travel ban was announced with little notice, sparking chaos at airports and protests across the nation.

While the ban has changed shape since then, it has remained a key part of Trump's "America First" vision, with the president believing that the restriction, taken in tandem with his promised wall at the southern border, would make the Unites States safer from potentially hostile foreigners.

In a statement he released Tuesday morning, Trump hailed the decision as "a moment of profound vindication" following "months of hysterical commentary from the media and Democratic politicians who refuse to do what it takes to secure our border and our country."

Strongly disagreeing, Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota said, "This decision will someday serve as a marker of shame." Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, and Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, who was born in Japan, both compared the ban and the ruling to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Critics of Trump's ban had urged the justices to affirm the decisions in lower courts that generally concluded that the changes made to the travel policy did not erase the ban's legal problems.

The current version dates from last September and it followed what the administration has called a thorough review by several federal agencies, although no such review has been shared with courts or the public.

Federal trial judges in Hawaii and Maryland had blocked the travel ban from taking effect, finding that the new version looked too much like its predecessors. Those rulings that were largely upheld by federal appeals courts in Richmond, Virginia, and San Francisco.

But the Supreme Court came to a different conclusion Tuesday. The policy has "a legitimate grounding in national security concerns," and it has several moderating features, including a waiver program that would allow some people from the affected countries to enter the U.S., Roberts said. The administration has said that 809 people have received waivers since the ban took full effect in December.

Roberts wrote that presidents have frequently used their power to talk to the nation "to espouse the principles of religious freedom and tolerance on which this Nation was founded." But he added that presidents and the country have not always lived up "to those inspiring words."

The challengers to the ban asserted that Trump's statements crossed a constitutional line, Roberts said.

"But the issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements. It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a Presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility," he said

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Associated Press writers Ashraf Khalil and Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report.

 

Justices rule against pregnancy center law

By Mark Sherman and Jessica Gresko
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court effectively put an end Tuesday to a California law that forces anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to provide information about abortion.

The 5-4 ruling also casts doubts on similar laws in Hawaii and Illinois.

The California law took effect in 2016. It requires centers that are licensed by the state to tell clients about the availability of contraception, abortion and pre-natal care, at little or no cost. Centers that are unlicensed were required to post a sign that said so. The court struck down that portion of the law.

The centers said they were singled out and forced to deliver a message with which they disagreed. California said the law was needed to let poor women know all their options.

Justice Clarence Thomas in his majority opinion said the centers "are likely to succeed" in their constitutional challenge to the portion of the law involving licensed centers. That means that while the law is currently in effect, its challengers can go back to court to get an order halting its enforcement. An attorney for the challengers said Tuesday that they expect to be able to do that quickly.

"California cannot co-opt the licensed facilities to deliver its message for it," Thomas wrote for himself and his conservative colleagues, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. He called the requirement for unlicensed centers "unjustified and unduly burdensome."

Justice Stephen Breyer said among the reasons the law should be upheld is that the high court has previously upheld state laws requiring doctors to tell women seeking abortions about adoption services. "After all, the law must be evenhanded," Breyer said in a dissenting opinion joined by his liberal colleagues, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and anti-abortion groups were among those cheering the decision. The Trump administration had argued that California's law violates the rights of licensed centers but had no objection to the requirement for the unlicensed centers. "Speakers should not be forced by their government to promote a message with which they disagree, and pro-life pregnancy centers in California should not be forced to advertise abortion and undermine the very reason they exist," Sessions said in a statement Tuesday.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra called the decision "unfortunate" but said "our work to ensure that Californians receive accurate information about their healthcare options will continue."

The abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice California was a prime sponsor of the California law. NARAL contends that the centers mislead women about their options and tried to pressure them to forgo abortion. Estimates of the number of crisis pregnancy centers in the U.S. run from 2,500 to more than 4,000, compared with fewer than 1,500 abortion providers, women's rights groups said in a Supreme Court filing.

NARAL president Ilyse Hogue said in a statement after Tuesday's decision that the Supreme Court had "turned its back on women and condoned the deceptive tactics used by fake women's health centers."

California's law was challenged by the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, an organization with ties to 1,500 pregnancy centers nationwide and 140 in California. The group was represented at the Supreme Court by Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian law firm. NIFLA president Thomas Glessner applauded the court's decision Tuesday. He called the decision "monumental" and said it was a "great day for pro-life pregnancy centers" and for free speech.

Other cities and states have also passed laws related to crisis pregnancy centers. In 2014, A federal appeals court in New York struck down parts of a New York City ordinance, although it upheld the requirement for unlicensed centers to say that they lack a license.

Other states have laws that regulate doctors' speech in the abortion context. In Louisiana, Texas and Wisconsin, doctors must display a sonogram and describe the fetus to most pregnant women considering an abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights. Similar laws have been blocked in Kentucky, North Carolina and Oklahoma.

 

Court lets family sue deputy

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is letting the family of a California teenager who was fatally shot while holding a pellet gun go forward with a lawsuit against authorities.

The Supreme Court declined Monday to get involved in the case, leaving in place lower court decisions in favor of 13-year-old Andy Lopez's family.

Lopez was fatally shot by Sonoma County sheriff's deputy Erick Gelhaus on Oct. 22, 2013. Gelhaus saw Lopez carrying what appeared to be an AK-47 but was actually a plastic pellet gun made to look like an AK-47.

A federal trial court and an appeals court let the lawsuit go forward.

Lawyers for the county and the deputy argued that the suit should be dismissed because they were immune from being sued.

Published: Wed, Jun 27, 2018