Monday was a major day in the Supreme Court, and a day full of back to back victories for President Donald Trump and his supporters.
The high court is allowing the Trump administration to go forward with a version of its ban on travel from six mostly Muslim countries, a victory for President Donald Trump in the biggest legal controversy of his young presidency. The justices will hear full arguments in October.
In the meantime, the court said Monday that Trump’s ban on visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen can be enforced if those visitors lack a “credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”
Trump said last week that the ban would take effect 72 hours after being cleared by courts.
Very grateful for the 9-O decision from the U. S. Supreme Court. We must keep America SAFE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2017
The administration has said the 90-day ban was needed on national security grounds to allow an internal review of screening procedures for visa applicants from the six countries, areas former President Barack Obama called Islamic “terror hotbeds.”
The administration review should be complete before Oct. 2, the first day the justices could hear arguments in their new term.
A 120-day ban on refugees also is being allowed to take effect on a limited basis.
Three of the court’s conservative justices said they would have let the complete ban take effect.
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Samuel Alito and newcomer Neil Gorsuch, said the government has shown it is likely to succeed on the merits of the case, and that it will suffer irreparable harm with any interference. Thomas said the government’s interest in preserving national security outweighs any hardship to people denied entry into the country.
Trump hailed the high court’s order as a “clear victory for our national security.” He said in a statement that his “number one responsibility” is to keep the American people safe.
In another victory for conservatives, the court sided with a church that had sought a grant to put a soft surface on its preschool playground.
Chief Justice John Roberts said for the court that the state violated the First Amendment by denying a public benefit to an otherwise eligible recipient solely on account of its religious status. He called it “odious to our Constitution” to exclude the church from the grant program, even though the consequences are only “a few extra scraped knees.”
The case arose from an application the church submitted in 2012 to take part in Missouri’s scrap tire grant program, which reimburses the cost of installing a rubberized playground surface made from recycled tires. The money comes from a fee paid by anyone who buys a new tire. The church’s application to resurface the playground for its preschool and daycare ranked fifth out of 44 applicants.
But the state’s Department of Natural Resources rejected the application, pointing to the part of the state constitution that says “no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion.”
A recycled scrap tire is not religious, the church said in its Supreme Court brief. “It is wholly secular,” the church said.
And the justices said they’ll take on a new clash between gay rights and religion in a case about a wedding cake for a same-sex couple in Colorado.
The justices will begin to hear cases again Oct. 2.
Until then, they’re off to summer activities, which for Justice Anthony Kennedy includes spending part of the summer as he typically does, teaching a law school class in Salzburg, Austria.
While Justice Kennedy was rumored to announce his retirement at Monday’s hearing, the court recessed without any retirement announcement from Kennedy.
Kennedy could still announce his retirement at any time, though the last day of the term was seen as an opportune moment.
Kennedy turns 81 next month and has been on the court for nearly 30 years. Several of his former law clerks have said they think he is contemplating stepping down in the next year or so. In addition, Kennedy and his clerks gathered over the weekend for a reunion pushed up a year earlier than normal. The decision to hold an early reunion helped spark talk he might be leaving the court.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.