No Surprise: SCOTUS Vacates Trump v. Hawai'i Travel Ban Certiorari

Professor Ruthann Robson, City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law

In an Order today the Court brought the litigation in Hawai'i v. Trump on Muslim Ban/Travel ban 2.0 to a close. The Order provides:

We granted certiorari in this case to resolve a challenge to the temporary suspension of entry of aliens and refugees under Section 2(c) and Section 6 of Executive Order No. 13,780. Because those provisions of the Order have “expired by [their] own terms,” the appeal no longer presents a “live case or controversy.” Burke v. Barnes, 479 U. S. 361, 363 (1987). Following our established practice in such cases, the judgment is therefore vacated, and the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit with instructions to dismiss as moot the challenge to Executive Order No. 13,780. United States v. Munsingwear, Inc., 340 U. S. 36, 39 (1950). We express no view on the merits.

Justice Sotomayor dissents from the order vacating the judgment below and would dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted.

This Order replicates the Court's previous dismissal in IRAP v. Trump on October 10.

This does not end litigation on the issues.

Recall that so-called Muslim Ban/Travel Ban 2.0 has been replaced by so-called Muslim Ban/Travel Ban 3.0, Presidential Proclamation 9645, entitled “Enhancing Vetting Capabilities and Processes for Detecting Attempted Entry Into the United States by Terrorists or Other Public-Safety Threats”of September 24, 2017.  Like the previous iterations, this has been enjoined by federal judges in Hawai'i (Hawai'i v. Trump) and in Maryland (IRAP v. Trump).