The ruling was 5-4 along partisan lines, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the conservative majority.

The ruling sends a strong message that Trump has broad powers under immigration law to act to protect national security and that statements made during a campaign may not be legally determinative of the President's intent.

"The Proclamation is squarely within the scope of Presidential authority," Roberts wrote.

Trump immediately reacted on Twitter:

SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow!

SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2018

The President then called the ruling "a tremendous victory for the American People and the Constitution" and said he felt vindicated.

"This ruling is also a moment of profound vindication following months of hysterical commentary from the media and Democratic politicians who refuse to do what it takes to secure our border and our country," Trump said.

This is the third version of the travel ban. It was issued in September -- after previous bans had ricocheted through the courts -- and restricts entry from seven countries to varying degrees: Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Venezuela. Chad was originally on the list but it was recently removed after having met baseline security requirements.

Challengers, including the state of Hawaii, argued that the travel ban exceeded the President's authority under immigration law as well as the Constitution. They also used Trump's statements during the campaign, when he called for a ban on travel from all Muslim-majority countries, but Roberts dismissed those concerns.

"Plaintiffs argue that this President's words strike at fundamental standards of respect and tolerance, in violation of our constitutional tradition," Roberts wrote. "But the issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements. It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a Presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility. In doing so, we must consider not only the statements of a particular President, but also the authority of the Presidency itself."

Stephen Vladeck, CNN's Supreme Court analyst and a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, called the ruling a "big win" for the White House.

"The Supreme Court has reaffirmed the President's sweeping statutory authority when it comes to deciding who may and who may not travel to the United States, authority that both President Trump and future presidents will surely rely upon to justify more aggressive immigration restrictions," Vladeck said.

However, Vladeck noted that this was the third version of the travel ban and the administration made significant changes in response to lower-court rulings invalidating the first two iterations, including one issued one week after Trump became president in January 2017.

The Supreme Court will wrap up its term Wednesday.

Sotomayor dissent and Korematsu

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a blistering dissent, said the court was wrong to ignore Trump's various comments.

"The majority here completely sets aside the President's charged statements about Muslims as irrelevant," she wrote. "That holding erodes the foundational principles of religious tolerance that the court elsewhere has so emphatically protected, and it tells members of minority religions in our country 'that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community.'"

She also compared the opinion to one that came down in 1944 in which the court blessed the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Reacting to the dissent, Roberts took the unusual step to declare that the 1944 case, Korematsu v. United States, was no longer good law and was wrongly decided. It is the first time the Supreme Court has ever made this public determination.

Liberal lawmakers, groups denounce ruling

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, said Tuesday's decision "give legitimacy to discrimination and Islamophobia."

Neal Katyal, one of the lead attorneys for Hawaii in the case said although he was "disappointed" in the court's decision, he argued that the process gives him hope and called on Congress to reverse the President's travel ban.

"While we continue to believe that this third version fails that test, there is no question that by striking down the first two travel bans, the judiciary forced a recalcitrant administration to at least give its order the veil of constitutionality," Katyal said in a statement Tuesday. "We continue to believe, as do four dissenting justices, that the travel ban is unconstitutional, unprecedented, unnecessary and un-American."

The American Civil Liberties Union also strongly condemned the court's ruling, writing on Twitter that "this is not the first time the Court has been wrong, or has allowed official racism and xenophobia to continue rather than standing up to it."

Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a statement that the court's "ruling will go down in history as one of the Supreme Court's great failures."

Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez said, "Discrimination is not a national security strategy, and prejudice is not patriotism. Let's call this ban for what it is: an outright attack on the Muslim community that violates our nation's commitment to liberty and justice for all."

Congressional Republicans applauded the court's decision, arguing that it was a win for national security and dismissing the accusations that it is a ban on Muslims entering the United States.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he was "pleased."

"As I stated when the new Executive Order was issued, it is not a religious ban," Graham said on Twitter. "The order was focused on countries that are in true states of disarray and would have great difficulty vetting to ensure terrorists are not coming into the United States."

This story is breaking and will be updated.</s>WASHINGTON—Justice Anthony Kennedy has put the notion of human dignity at the center of his jurisprudence and made civility a theme of his public discourse. It was difficult to mistake his message Tuesday when he penned an implicit critique of President Donald Trump even while voting to uphold the president’s travel ban.

While he joined the majority in upholding Mr. Trump’s travel ban, affecting five predominantly Muslim countries, “it is appropriate to make this further observation,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “There are numerous...</s>The US Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the Trump administration's travel ban on people from Muslim-majority countries.</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has upheld President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries, rejecting a challenge that it discriminated against Muslims or exceeded his authority.

The 5-4 decision Tuesday is the court’s first substantive ruling on a Trump administration policy.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by his four conservative colleagues.

Roberts wrote that presidents have substantial power to regulate immigration.

The court may have signaled its eventual approval in December, when the justices allowed the policy to take full effect even as the court fight continued and lower courts had ruled it out of bounds.

The President has tweeted his response to the decision saying, "SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow!"</s>A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of President Donald Trump's executive proclamation banning travelers from certain largely majority-Muslim countries. "Because there is persuasive evidence that the entry suspension has a legitimate grounding in national security concerns, quite apart from any religious hostility," declared the majority opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts in Trump v. Hawaii, "we must accept that independent justification." This decision reverses a lower court ruling that had blocked the travel ban from going into effect.

At the center of the case is Trump's September 2017 "Proclamation No. 9645, Enhancing Vetting Capabilities and Processes for Detecting Attempted Entry Into the United States by Terrorists or Other Public-Safety Threats." At issue before the justices was whether this proclamation represented an invalid exercise of federal immigration power and also whether it violated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause by heaping official disfavor on a religious minority, particularly when the proclamation is viewed in light of Trump's long record of making anti-Muslim statements.

Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, ruled in Trump's favor on both counts.

"By its plain language," the chief justice wrote, federal immigration law "grants the President broad discretion to suspend the entry of aliens into the United States. The President lawfully exercised that discretion based on his findings—following a worldwide, multi-agency review—that entry of the covered aliens would be detrimental to the national interest."

Roberts then had this to say about the Establishment Clause challenge:

Plaintiffs argue that this President's words strike at fundamental standards of respect and tolerance, in violation of our constitutional tradition. But the issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements. It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a Presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility. In doing so, we must consider not only the statements of a particular President, but also the authority of the Presidency itself.

Writing in dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, argued that the Court should not have decided the case until it had the opportunity to hear additional arguments about the real-world implementation of the travel ban, particularly on how its "exemption and waiver" process is actually functioning. "If this Court must decide the question without this further litigation," Breyer wrote, "I would, on balance, find the evidence of antireligious bias."

In a separate dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, charged the majority with turning a blind eye to the president's blatant Establishment Clause violation. The Court "leaves undisturbed a policy first advertised openly and unequivocally as a 'total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States' because the policy now masquerades behind a facade of national-security concerns," Sotomayor wrote. "Based on the evidence in the record, a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus. That alone suffices to show that plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their Establishment Clause claim."

At its heart, this case was about how much deference the federal courts owe to the executive branch when the executive is acting in the name of national security. According to the Court's 5-4 ruling, the executive is entitled to significant deference in such matters. "The Government has set forth a sufficient national security justification to survive rational basis review," wrote Chief Justice Roberts. "We express no view on the soundness of the policy."

The Supreme Court's opinion in Trump v. Hawaii is available here.</s>The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in favor of President Donald Trump in Trump v. Hawaii, the controversial case regarding Trump's September order to restrict travel to the U.S. for citizens of several majority Muslim countries.

In the 5-4 opinion penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court found that Trump's immigration restriction fell "squarely" within the president's authority. The court rejected claims that the ban was motivated by religious hostility.

"The [order] is expressly premised on legitimate purposes: preventing entry of nationals who cannot be adequately vetted and inducing other nations to improve their practices," Roberts wrote. "The text says nothing about religion."

The case has been central to the Trump administration's immigration policy, presenting a key test of the president's campaign promise to restrict immigration and secure America's borders.

The immigration restriction is the Trump administration's third, and affects people from Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. Chad was dropped from the list of affected countries in April.

Previous iterations of the ban were revised after facing challenges in court.

"Though I am disappointed by the outcome, I am heartened that our system of government worked as the founders intended," Neil Katyal, attorney for the challengers in the case, said in a statement Tuesday. "Now that the Court has upheld it, it is up to Congress to do its job and reverse President Trump’s unilateral and unwise travel ban."

The ruling broke down largely on partisan lines. Roberts and the four justices concurring with him, including Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, were all appointed by Republican presidents. The four dissenting justices, including Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, were appointed by Democrats.

“The Supreme Court’s decision today was unsurprising," said Stephen Yale-Loehr, the co-author of a 21-volume book on U.S. immigration law. Yale-Loehr signed a friend of the court brief on behalf of Hawaii.

"Because immigration touches on national sovereignty and foreign relations, courts have generally deferred to the president on immigration issues,” he said.</s>The Supreme Court has upheld President Donald Trump's travel ban in one of the most highly anticipated decisions of this year, saying the ban is "squarely within" the president's authority.The Court's 5-4 ruling that the third iteration of Trump's controversial proposal, Travel Ban 3.0, is constitutional comes after two previous attempts by the administration to bar immigration to the United States from certain foreign countries.President Trump reacted quickly, tweeting "SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow!"SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 26, 2018 That newest iteration of the travel ban is a presidential proclamation signed on Sept. 24, 2017, that indefinitely restricted most travel from the countries of Chad, Iran Iraq , Libya, North Korea, Syria Venezuela , and Yemen -linking the restrictions to those countries' purported vetting deficiencies. In April, The U.S. lifted travel restrictions on Chad.Some of those countries have a majority-Muslim population, leading to accusations that the administration was unfairly targeting Muslims. Federal judges in Maryland and Hawaii issued injunctions shortly afterward that blocked the ban for the majority-Muslim countries but allowed restrictions from North Korea and Venezuela to go into effect.Trump said in a statement the ruling is a "tremendous victory" for the American people."In this era of worldwide terrorism and extremist movements bent on harming innocent civilians, we must properly vet those coming into our country. This ruling is also a moment of profound vindication following months of hysterical commentary from the media and Democratic politicians who refuse to do what it takes to secure our border and our country," he said in the statement."As long as I am President, I will defend the sovereignty, safety, and security of the American People, and fight for an immigration system that serves the national interests of the United States and its citizens. Our country will always be safe, secure, and protected on my watch."In the case, Trump v. Hawaii, the state of Hawaii argues that the ban hurts its university system by banning potential students and scholars from entering the country. Individual plaintiffs who joined the case with Hawaii also say it separates them from family members who applied for visas to enter the country.The administration argued that Travel Ban 3.0 was vetted by multiple agencies and was based on a review of foreign policy, not religion. Hawaii and the other plaintiffs challenged the proclamation, asking the court to rule on whether it was a lawful use of the president's authority, was too broad, or improperly targeted countries with a large Muslim population.The court ruled in favor of the administration, Chief Justice John Roberts writing "..the Government has set forth a sufficient national security justification to survive rational basis review. We express no view on the soundness of the policy. We simply hold today that plaintiffs have not demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits of their constitutional claim.""The proclamation is squarely within the scope of Presidential authority under the INA," Roberts wrote in the court's decision, also saying that neither dissent "even attempts a serious argument to the contrary." INA is an acronym for the Immigration and Nationality Act.In response to arguments that the travel ban targeted Muslims, citing President Trump's previous comments about Muslims and Islam, the plaintiffs argued that Trump's rhetoric contradicted America's constitutional tradition, but Roberts said the proclamation itself is neutral toward religion."The Proclamation is expressly premised on legitimate purposes: preventing entry of nationals who cannot be adequately vetted and inducing other nations to improve their practices. The text says nothing about religion," Roberts said. "Plaintiffs and the dissent nonetheless emphasize that five of the seven nations currently included in the Proclamation have Muslim-majority populations. Yet that fact alone does not support an inference of religious hostility, given that the policy covers just 8% of the world's Muslim population."Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said in her dissent that the majority decision fails to protect religious liberty as a fundamental American principle. The dissent chronicles many of Trump's previous comments about Muslims during the campaign and references that the travel ban was originally advertised as a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.""This repackaging does little to cleanse Presidential Proclamation No. 9645 of the appearance of discrimination that the President's words have created. Based on the evidence in the record, a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus," Sotomayor said.Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the decision is a "great victory for the safety and security of all Americans.""The Constitution and Acts of Congress confer on the President broad discretion to protect the interests of the United States. Today's decision is critical to ensuring the continued authority of President Trump - and all future presidents - to protect the American people. We will continue to take and defend all lawful steps necessary to protect this great nation," he said in a statement.The Department of Homeland Security also said that the ruling confirms the legality of Trump's executive actions to protect Americans from terrorists and malicious actors that abuse the immigration system.The American Civil Liberties Union said the decision will "go down in history as one of the Supreme Court's greatest failures.""It is ultimately the people of this country who will determine its character and future. The court failed today, and so the public is needed more than ever. We must make it crystal clear to our elected representatives: If you are not taking action to rescind and dismantle Trump's Muslim ban, you are not upholding this country's most basic principles of freedom and equality," director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project Omar Jadwat said in a statement.Two previous attempts by the Trump administration to restrict immigration from majority-Muslim countries have been struck down by federal courts.A week after his inauguration, Trump issued an executive order to immediately suspend admission into the country by individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan for 90 days. It also halted refugee admissions for 120 days and indefinitely banned Syrian refugees. The order contained an exception for members of religious minorities.Inflamed by the administration's attempt to restrict immigration from predominantly Muslim countries, protesters descended on the nation's airports and chaos swiftly ensued. The Ninth Circuit rejected the first so-called travel ban, and the administration subsequently introduced a slightly altered order. Travel Ban 2.0 also faced challenges in a number of lower courts, but in June 2017 the Supreme Court allowed it to go partially into effect. The order expired by its own terms and the Trump administration replaced it with the proclamation upheld Tuesday.The addition of Chad -- a key counterterror ally which has been cooperating with the U.S. against ISIS, Boko Haram, and others -- was seen by many foreign policy experts as a grave error. Since then, the White House said H.R. McMaster, the then-national security adviser, had spoken to Chad's president, Idriss Deby Itno, about how to work together "to address the deficiencies, toward the goal of improving vetting capabilities and lifting visa restrictions."</s>In what is shaping up to be a major win for the Trump administration, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in favor of President Donald Trump’s travel ban.

The case, Trump v. Hawaii, stems from Trump’s polarizing September order to block citizens of several countries from traveling to the United States in an effort to prevent terrorist attacks.

Trump’s order was challenged in court as discriminatory against Muslims — most of the countries affected have majority Muslim populations — but the Supreme Court disagreed.

Chief Justice John Roberts penned the 5-4 opinion in which the court found that Trump’s order was well within his authority as president.

The decision also denied that religious hostility had anything to do with the order.

TRENDING: ‘Disgusted, Horrified, Embarrassed, Ashamed’ Comey Now Wishes He Was Canadian

“The [order] is expressly premised on legitimate purposes: preventing entry of nationals who cannot be adequately vetted and inducing other nations to improve their practices,” Roberts wrote.

Roberts was also very blunt about the accusations of religious discrimination.

“The text says nothing about religion,” he wrote.

“Plaintiffs argue that this President’s words strike at fundamental standards of respect and tolerance, in violation of our constitutional tradition,” Roberts continued. “But the issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements. It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a Presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility. In doing so, we must consider not only the statements of a particular President, but also the authority of the Presidency itself.”

The decision allows the Trump administration’s policy to proceed unfettered. Several revisions had to be made to the travel ban policy after it was challenged in court; this latest version of the travel ban was its third iteration.

The decision is also a major step forward for the Trump administration’s promise to secure America’s borders and implement a stronger vetting process for immigration.

The countries impacted by the immigration restriction are Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen. Since the most recent revision in April, the country of Chad was dropped.

Hawaii’s case against Trump claimed that the travel ban was wholly inspired by religious discrimination. The attorney for the challengers in this case, Neil Katyal, argued that the restrictions were essentially a “Muslim ban.”

Katyal used several of Trump’s tweets to argue his case.

Trump has long argued that the travel ban was not a “Muslim ban,” but an issue of American security.

“This is not about religion — this is about terror and keeping our country safe,” the president said in January.

Facebook has greatly reduced the distribution of our stories in our readers' newsfeeds and is instead promoting mainstream media sources. When you share to your friends, however, you greatly help distribute our content. Please take a moment and consider sharing this article with your friends and family. Thank you.</s>President Donald Trump’s supporters praised a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Tuesday upholding the administration's travel ban as a victory for his agenda and a boost in an election year.

Trina Rogers, 30, a homemaker from Merrill, in northern Wisconsin, said she is “totally cool” with the travel ban and “100 percent supportive” of Trump's actions as president.

“You can’t move forward if you don’t have change,” Rogers said. “I support Trump in everything he is doing.”

Tuesday’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling on Trump's temporary travel ban against predominantly Muslim countries reinforced the president’s authority on national security matters and reversed a series of lower court decisions that had struck down the ban as illegal or unconstitutional.

Tuesday's victory should help energize those hard-core Trump supporters heading into the 2018 midterm elections, some Republican leaders said.

But make no mistake, they said, his base has remained committed to the Trump presidency since his surprise 2016 election.

“We’ve been energized,” said JoAnn DeBartolo, head of the Naples, Florida-based Collier for Trump Club. “It’s not like it went away.”

DeBatolo, who led the Trump campaign in Collier County, said about 200 people showed up for the club’s most recent luncheon at a local seafood restaurant in mid-June. Trump continues to receive strong support in pockets of Florida, including the southwest coastal counties where record turnout for him helped him win 61 percent of the vote in Collier and 59 percent in neighboring Lee County.

Trump also received high marks Tuesday in Wisconsin, where supporters also gave him the edge in 2016. Supporter Richard Staedt, 80, a retiree from Appleton just southwest of Green Bay, said Trump’s fight to preserve the travel ban proves the president is keeping his campaign promises.

“I feel just as pleased about him as before,” Staedt said. “He gets an ‘A’ from me.”

Trump, who enjoyed a 45-percent approval rating in mid-June that matched a high for his presidency following his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, should benefit from even more support following Tuesday's ruling.

"More and more people will become Trump supporters," said Jonathan Martin of Fort Myers, Florida, chair of the Lee County Republican Party.

Winston Ohlhausen of Abilene, Texas, chair of the Republican Party in Taylor County where Trump won nearly 73 percent of the votes, said the ruling striking down lower court decisions was “a no-brainer for somebody who believes in the Constitution.

“It was such a far-fetched ruling. It was so blatant against what the president had the power and ability in his position to do,” Ohlhausen said.

In Florida's panhandle where Trump received some of his biggest victory margins in the state, Pensacola resident Dan Lindemann disagrees with critics who say the ban amounts to religious discrimination.

“To me, it’s purely about national security,” said Lindemann, a former Marine helicopter pilot, small business owner and Trump voter. “When we’re talking about international terrorism and threats from extremists, the majority of the risk comes from Muslim countries. Therefore, the security measures inherently affect Muslim countries.

"It’s a reasonable defense against groups that have declared jihad against Americans.”

The travel ban ruling was the latest in a string of Supreme Court victories that have favored conservative and Republican causes.

In early June, the court sided with a Colorado baker accused of discrimination for refusing to create a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Also on Tuesday, the court ruled against a California law that required anti-abortion pregnancy centers to inform women about publicly-funded abortion and contraceptive services.

Martin said those issues, although not directly related to the Trump administration, show the importance of the president's appointments to the Supreme Court. Trump appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch to the court in his first year.

The court victories and a roaring economy could sway moderates and swing voters, and show them that Trump isn’t the “evil dictator” that some media and opponents make him out to be, Martin said.

“It’s not affecting the Trump supporters,” Martin said. “They already know where he’s at. Trump supporters aren’t racist. They’re not bigots the media is making them out to be.

“They just want their borders safe, just like every other country in the world.”

“Trump haters still haven’t realized how much they help him with their condescension of those who either voted for him or don’t share their hatred of him,” Rubio tweeted. “And how much they help him with their irrational hostility towards those who work for him.”

The travel ban ruling and other recent Supreme Court decisions offer Trump opponents an opportunity to rally for the upcoming election, said Juan Cuba, chair of the Democratic Party in Miami.

“I think cases like these highlight what’s really at stake in the next election, and what’s at stake in our country,” he said. “It’s not just the laws. It’s who we are as a country, what our values are.”

More: What Supreme Court ruling on travel ban means for other countries

More: Travel ban timeline: 17 months, three versions, two appeals courts, one Supreme Court</s>Imposed last September by presidential proclamation, the latest version maintains limits on granting visas to travelers from five of the seven countries covered by the original executive order on travel — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. It lifted restrictions on visitors from Sudan, and it adds new limits on North Korea and Venezuela.

Chad was part of the proclamation but was taken off the list in April after the White House said it met enhanced visa security requirements. Iraq was listed in the original travel ban imposed last year but was removed in the second version.

The state of Hawaii, three of its residents and a Muslim-American group challenged the new restrictions, and a federal judge blocked enforcement. But the Supreme Court lifted the stay last December, and the government has been carrying it out in full since.

The American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday that it's "not the first time the Court has been wrong."

Neal Katyal, who represented challengers to the travel ban, saying that the policy is unwise and un-American.

"We continue to believe, as do four dissenting justices, that the travel ban is unconstitutional, unprecedented, unnecessary and un-American," he said in a statement. "We decided long ago that America doesn't exclude people based on nationality or religion alone. Today, that principle has been challenged. But the final chapter has not yet been written, and the president would be mistaken to interpret today's decision as a greenlight to continue his unwise and un-American policies. ... The travel ban is atrocious policy, and makes us less safe and undermines our American ideals."

The Trump administration argued that the latest version of the travel ban is different, because it was imposed only after the administration surveyed more than 200 countries for their effectiveness in providing information about the backgrounds of visa applicants and success in fighting terrorism.

The Justice Department said the Constitution and federal laws give the president broad authority to suspend or restrict entry into the country when it is deemed to be in the nation's interest. While immigration law doesn't require the president to spell out detailed findings before invoking the authority, the government said, the September proclamation was more detailed than any previous order limiting travel.

But Hawaii and the other challengers said federal law gives the president the power to ban only foreign nationals who share some characteristics making them harmful to the U.S.

The travel ban was flawed, they said, because it restricted entry by 150 million people who share nothing in common but nationality. They also said the proclamation was based on religious animus, citing frequent promises from Trump, as a candidate and as president, to impose a Muslim ban.

The first executive order on travel, announced in February 2017, caused chaos at major airports when border officials refused to admit travelers who were in flight when the rules went into effect. It was quickly blocked by the courts.

Enforcement of a second travel ban, issued about a month later, was also stopped by lower court judges. The Supreme Court then allowed it to be enforced except for visa applicants with family or other close U.S. connections, but the revised version expired before it was to be the subject of full-blown Supreme Court review last fall.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5–4 in favor of the Trump administration's September 2017 travel ban.