33.3 - Not Good News: SCOTUS reinstates TheRump' ban on refugees while case is on appeal

Not Good News: SCOTUS reinstates TheRump' ban on refugees while case is on appeal

And that Good News is extra nice to have because we also have some Not Good News regarding TheRump's bigoted attempts to ban refugees and many Muslims from entering the US.

Back in June, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the issue of those attempts and said that while the case was under consideration it would partially reinstate the ban, "partially" meaning the ban would only apply to people without "a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States."

The question ever since has been what that phrase means. TheRump's administration, to no one's surprise, interpreted it very narrowly. It said it covers only what amounts to little more than the immediate family of an American resident, just if you will one step out from that person, so only parents, children, siblings, and in-laws could enter and what's more, that refugees were not covered because a connection to a resettlement agency was not "a bona fide relationship" with a US entity.

On September 7, a panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling rejecting both those contentions. It expanded family connections to include grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, and cousins as well as saying that yes, a connection to a refugee agency is a bona fide relationship.

Which would appear to be Good News, but the Not Good News is that on September 12, the Supreme Court - without any recorded dissents - blocked the part of that ruling relating to refugees from going into effect wile the government appeals, leaving the 24,000 refugees affected by the ban in an ever-stretching legal limbo, with oral arguments not until October 10 and a decision not until who knows how long after that.

But there is some Good News among the Not Good News. The administration did not even challenge the other part of the 9th Circuit ruling, the part that smacked down the White House's restrictive definition of what constituted an immigrant having a relationship with someone already in the US. So that part of the ruling, with its expanded definition, stands. And so yes, that is Good News within the Not Good News.