United States President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday moved the Supreme Court, asking it to reimpose his government’s ban on entry of people from six Muslim-majority countries. Trump’s legal team has asked the apex court to expedite the hearing and denied allegations that the ban is anti-Muslim, Reuters reported.
Trump’s administration asked the court to reimpose the ban while its nine justices decide on the rulings of lower courts that said the policy was “steeped in animus and directed at a single religious group,” Bloomberg reported. The president’s ban needs five votes from the nine-justice bench. The court has five conservatives on its panel including Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is considered a swing vote, Reuters reported.
“The president is not required to admit people from countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism,” said Justice Department spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores adding that they may be admitted after “proper vetting”, CNN reported.
On March 6, the US president had signed a executive order imposing a 90-day ban on the entry of people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from March 16, leaving Iraq out of the list though it was there on a previous version of the order . However, a federal judge in Hawaii had blocked the revised travel ban just hours before it was due to come into effect on March 16, a move Trump had called an “unprecedented judicial overreach”.
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