Supreme Court Rules that Trump's Travel Ban Will Go Fully Into Effect

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Trump administration’s travel ban, which bans residents of six Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the United States, will be enforced in full, even as its legality is still up for debate.

NBC News reports that the Supreme Court voted largely in favor of the policy taking effect; Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were the sole voices of dissent. The ban in question is the third iteration of this policy, issued in September, and aimed at restricting travel from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, Somalia and Yemen.

According to the Washington Post, this decision stemmed from a request from the president’s lawyers to lift the restrictions on the ban that had been placed there by the lower courts. Those partial bans issued by the lower courts allowed for people with a “bona fide” relationship with someone in the United States to enter the country, including grandparents, cousins, and other relatives.

The New York Times reports that most of the citizens from the banned countries will be unable to emigrate to the United States, but the specifics vary by country. Iran will still be allowed to send students for exchange programs, but those students will have to endure “enhanced screening.” Somali citizens will not be able to emigrate here, but still can visit with screening, as well.

“A nationality-based travel ban against eight nations consisting of over 150 million people is unprecedented,” wrote Judge Theodore D. Chuang of the Federal District Court in Maryland in October. Don’t think that because North Korea and Venezuela are on the list of banned countries that this is anything other than a Muslim ban. The time to protest, as ever, is now.