//  6/18/17  //  Topic Update

The Ninth Circuit largely upheld a lower court’s injunction of President Trump’s revised entry ban (NYT, WaPo, LA Times, AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, The Hill, Politico).

• Here is the Ninth Circuit’s opinion.
• At Take Care, Leah Litman unpacks the decision and explains the implications for Supreme Court review.
• The ruling avoids constitutional issues by relying on statutory violations, says Debra Cassens Weiss (ABA Journal).
• At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern argues that the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning provides the Supreme Court with a narrower basis on which to rule against President Trump.
• At Balkinization, Mark Tushnet suggests the ruling makes it easier for the Supreme Court to dismiss the case as moot.
• Hawaii cited President Trump’s recent entry-ban tweetstorm in its brief asking the Supreme Court to uphold the Ninth Circuit’s stay of that ban, writed Lydia Wheeler (The Hill).
• The Ninth Circuit also cited one of the President’s tweets in its Monday ruling, notes David Kravets (Ars Technica).
• At Slate, Dahlia Lithwick discusses how the Ninth Circuit’s citation to President Trump’s tweets may dispel the notion that tweets are not official statements by the President.
• The Supreme Court should expedite resolution of the entry ban case, argues Joshua Blackman (NYT).
• Lyle Denniston suggests the Supreme Court may decide as early as this week whether to take up the case.
• The opinion rests on a flawed statutory analysis of the Immigration and Nationality Act, argues Peter Margulies at Lawfare.
• And that statutory basis risks obscuring the moral clarity of the constitutional problems with the executive order, suggests Noah Feldman at Bloomberg.
• Also at Lawfare, Amira Mikhail and Jordan Brunner provide an overview of the facts and procedural history of the case, as well as potential implications for Supreme Court review.
• Neither federal injunction has addressed the argument that the travel ban has expired. President Trump issued a memo saying that the 90-day ban won’t start until court orders currently blocking it are lifted. Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall characterized this announcement as a clarification, not a revision (Bloomberg Politics, The Hill, WaPo, Lyle Denniston’s blog).
• Although the travel ban remains on hold, the number of people admitted from the six named countries is down by half from last year. (WSJ).
• The very text of the travel ban shows its unconstitutionality, writes Gerald Neuman (Just Security).

The government asked the Supreme Court for permission to submit new briefs in response to the Ninth Circuit’s holding (The Hill, Lyle Denniston, ScotusBlog, Politico).

• The Supreme Court responded Tuesday afternoon by granting that request and requiring supplemental briefing and replies by June 21 (Lyle Denniston).

The argument that national injunctions are justified for uniformity of immigration enforcement is weak, argues Sam Bray at Volokh Conspiracy.

President Trump’s administration has moved slowly to respond to legal challenges to its executive orders, meaning that few changes have actually been made to U.S. vetting policies (NYT).

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