The U.S. Supreme Court stayed a lower court ruling which narrowed enforcement of President Donald Trump's travel ban, handing the administration another victory on a signature immigration policy initiative.
Justices will have to examine whether the travel ban discriminates against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution, as lower courts previously ruled. There were no noted dissents.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: "We are pleased that the Supreme Court has allowed key components of the order to remain in effect". And as Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law, told CNN on Tuesday, this particular ruling isn't really an indication on how the court will rule in October.
The meaning of that phrase has been contested ever since.
The court's order notwithstanding, it's unclear at this point what will be left for the court to decide. It gave examples: Students admitted to USA universities qualified, as did workers with job offers from US companies and lecturers invited to address USA audiences.
Naureen Shah, Amnesty International USA's senior director of campaigns, said the refugee ban is inherently cruel. But the Trump Administration filed a request to block the eventual ruling, which they just did. It said that only some relatives of US residents - parents, children, spouses, siblings, parents-in-law, sons- and daughters-in-law and people engaged to be married - could enter.
The 9th Circuit's order requires the administration to admit refugees contracting with resettlement agencies beginning Tuesday.
In July, a circuit court judge dismissed the state of South Dakota from the list of defendants in a lawsuit by 35 Chinese investors who lost $18.55 million in a failed EB-5 economic development project in Aberdeen.
Kennedy's order is but the latest development in the see-saw legal battle over President Trump's March 6 executive order that banned travel to the United States by foreign nationals from six countries identified as being state sponsors of terrorism. "It is formal, it is a documented contract, it is binding, it triggers responsibilities and obligations, including compensation, it is issued specific to an individual refugee only when that refugee has been approved for entry by the Department of Homeland Security".
The Justice Department opted not to appeal that part of the 9th Circuit decision.
The South Dakota Supreme Court has denied a request to hear an appeal in a case involving the controversial federal immigrant-investor program known as EB-5.
Earlier Tuesday, Hawaii said in a court filing that the United States government could still "bar tens of thousands of refugees from entering the country".
The government initially declined to include grandparents and other members of the extended family as meeting that standard, as well as refugees with formal assurances.
Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin said he respected the Supreme Court's decision and is preparing for the hearing there on October 10.
If the order was meant to be only a temporary move, that might be explained by the fact that the court is now in the final weeks of its summer recess, and all nine of the Justices might not have had the time to study closely what was at stake in the Administration's requests.