The Jim Bakker Show

Supreme Court’s cake case pits gay rights versus Christian faith

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When conservative Christian baker Jack Phillips in 2012 politely but firmly told Colorado gay couple David Mullins and Charlie Craig he would not make them a cake to celebrate their wedding, it triggered a chain of events that will climax on Tuesday in highly anticipated U.S. Supreme Court arguments.

Phillips contends the U.S. Constitution’s free speech guarantees protect him from making a cake that would violate his religious beliefs against gay marriage. To Mullins and Craig, the baker’s refusal represented a simple case of unlawful discrimination based on sexual orientation.

In one of the biggest cases of the conservative-majority court’s nine-month term, the justices — just two years after legalizing gay marriage — must decide whether Phillips’ action was constitutionally protected and he can avoid punishment for violating Colorado anti-discrimination law.

A ruling favoring Phillips could open the door for certain businesses to spurn gay couples by invoking religious beliefs, as some wedding photographers, florists and others already have done.

The brief encounter at Phillips’ Masterpiece Cakeshop in the Denver suburb of Lakewood left Mullins and Craig distraught. They filed a successful complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the first step in the five-year-old legal battle that the nine justices will resolve in a ruling due by the end of June.

The baker’s lawyers argue that because his cakes are artistic endeavors, guarantees of freedom of speech and expression enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protect Phillips from being forced to make baked creations that express a message he opposes on religious grounds.

Mullins and Craig were planning their wedding in Massachusetts that September and wanted the cake for a reception to be held in Colorado, where gay marriage was not yet legal. Craig’s mother witnessed the tense exchange, which he said made it harder for him to bear.

“I ended up starting to cry because I felt really bad and overwhelmed that my mom had to see me go through this. I guess it was the feeling of helplessness,” Craig said in an interview.

Phillips said he offered to sell the couple other products in his store but was adamant that his religious beliefs compelled him to draw a line when it comes to certain issues.

‘I SERVE EVERYBODY’

“Everybody that comes in my store is welcome in my store,” Phillips said in an interview. “I serve everybody that comes in and I create products for many events, just not all events.”

Based on his Christian beliefs, Phillips said he also refuses to make Halloween cakes as well as baked goods “that denigrate other people.”

The civil rights commission found that Phillips violated state anti-discrimination law that bars businesses from refusing service based on race, sex, marital status or sexual orientation. It ordered him to take remedial measures including staff training and the filing of quarterly compliance reports.

Phillips said he found the penalty “deeply offensive” in part because until recently his mother was one of his employees.

“I have to tell my mom, ‘Everything you have taught me doesn’t count here,'” Phillips said.

In 2015, the Colorado Court of Appeals also ruled against Phillips. The Colorado Supreme Court subsequently denied his appeal, prompting Phillips to take the case to the top U.S. court.

Evangelical Christians are an important part of President Donald Trump’s political base, and his administration filed a brief in support of Phillips.

The case puts 81-year-old Justice Anthony Kennedy, one of the court’s five conservative, in the spotlight. Kennedy, a potential deciding vote in a 5-4 ruling, has joined the court’s liberals in major decisions on issues such as abortion and gay rights. He authored the court’s landmark 2015 decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. But Kennedy is also a strong proponent of free speech rights.

CULTURAL FLASHPOINT

The case has become a cultural flashpoint in the United States that underscores the tensions between gay rights proponents and conservative Christians.

National advocacy groups have jumped in on both sides. Mullins and Craig are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union. Phillips is represented by the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.

Similar cases are being litigated in other U.S. courts, and other countries also are confronting the issue. In April, Britain’s Supreme Court will consider whether a Christian-run bakery in Northern Ireland can refuse to make a cake backing gay rights.

In this case and others involving such issues as abortion, union dues and campaign funding, conservatives have relied on free speech arguments before the Supreme Court, but the issue of religious liberty still looms large.

“This is about will the U.S. Supreme Court decide that the fundamental freedoms and liberties that Americans have taken for granted for 200 years are still valid,” said Phillips’ lawyer, Kristen Waggoner.

The ACLU said a ruling favoring Phillips could lead to other efforts to skirt anti-discrimination laws.

“They are asking for a constitutional right to discriminate,” ACLU lawyer Louise Melling said. “This is not a case about a cake. It is a case about a very radical proposition.”

Mullins and Craig did get to celebrate their marriage with a cake made by another bakery. Phillips will once again encounter them on Tuesday, this time in the grand marble halls of the Supreme Court.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Hawaii, ACLU ask U.S. top court not to allow full Trump travel ban

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The state of Hawaii and the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to allow President Donald Trump’s latest travel ban that would bar entry of people from six Muslim-majority countries to go into full effect after it was partially blocked by lower courts.

Lawyers for the Democratic-governed state and the civil liberties group, pursuing separate legal challenges to the ban, were responding to the Trump administration’s request last week that the conservative-majority court allow the ban to go into effect completely while litigation over the policy continues.

Both sets of challengers said the latest ban, Trump’s third, discriminates against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution and is not permissible under immigration laws.

The Republican president has said the travel ban is needed to protect the United States from terrorism by Muslim militants. As a candidate, Trump had promised “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

In the ACLU court filing, its lawyers said the administrative process that led to the latest ban “does not wipe away the history of the president’s efforts to ban Muslims, especially given the remarkable similarity between the current ban and its predecessors.”

On Nov. 13, the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the ban to go partly into effect while the litigation continued, lifting part of a Hawaii-based district court judge’s nationwide injunction.

Separately, a judge in Maryland partly blocked the ban on similar lines in the case spearheaded by the ACLU.

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in both cases. The high court could act at any time.

Whatever the Supreme Court decides, the two cases will continue in lower courts. The 9th Circuit and the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals both are due to hear oral arguments on the merits of the challenges next week.

Trump’s ban was announced on Sept. 24 and replaced two previous versions that had been impeded by federal courts.

The ban currently applies to people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Chad who do not have connections to the United States. Those with certain family relationships and other formal connections to the United States, such as through a university, can enter the country.

The ban also covers people from North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela, and lower courts have allowed those provisions to go into effect.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. Supreme Court weighs major digital privacy case

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday takes up a major test of privacy rights in the digital age as it weighs whether police must obtain warrants to get data on the past locations of criminal suspects using cellphone data from wireless providers.

The justices at 10 a.m. (1500 GMT) are due to hear an appeal by a man named Timothy Carpenter convicted in a series of armed robberies in Ohio and Michigan with the help of past cellphone location data that linked him to the crime locations. His American Civil Liberties Union lawyers argue that without a court-issued warrant such data amounts to an unreasonable search and seizure under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.

Law enforcement authorities routinely request and receive this information from wireless providers during criminal investigations as they try to link a suspect to a crime.

Police helped establish that Carpenter was near the scene of the robberies of Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores by securing from his cellphone carrier his past “cell site location information” tracking which cellphone towers had relayed his calls.

The legal fight has raised questions about the degree to which companies protect their customers’ privacy rights. The big four wireless carriers, Verizon Communications Inc, AT&T Inc, T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp, receive tens of thousands of these requests annually from law enforcement.

Verizon was the only one of those four companies to tell the Supreme Court that it favors strong privacy protections for its customers, with the other three sitting on the sidelines.

There is growing scrutiny of the surveillance practices of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies amid concern among lawmakers across the political spectrum about civil liberties and authorities evading warrant requirements.

The Supreme Court twice in recent years has ruled on major cases concerning how criminal law applies to new technology, both times ruling against law enforcement. In 2012, the court held that a warrant is required to place a GPS tracking device on a vehicle. Two years later, the court said police need a warrant to search a cellphone seized during an arrest.

Carpenter’s bid to suppress the evidence failed and he was convicted of six robbery counts. On appeal, the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his convictions, finding that no warrant was required for the cellphone data.

The ACLU said in court papers that police need “probable cause,” and therefore a warrant, in order to meet Fourth Amendment requirements.

Based on a provision of a 1986 federal law called the Stored Communications Act, the Justice Department said probable cause is not needed to obtain customer records. Instead, it argues, prosecutors must show only that there are “reasonable grounds” for the records to be provided and that they are “relevant and material” to an investigation.

President Donald Trump’s administration said in court papers the government has a “compelling interest” in acquiring the data without a warrant because the information is particularly useful at the early stages of a criminal investigation.

Civil liberties groups said the 1986 law did not anticipate the way mobile devices now contain a wealth of data on each user.

A ruling is due by the end of June.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

White House asks Supreme Court to allow full travel ban

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to allow President Donald Trump’s latest travel ban to take full effect after an appeals court in California ruled last week that only parts of it could be enacted.

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Nov. 13 partially granted a Trump administration request to block at least temporarily a judge’s ruling that had put the new ban on hold. It ruled the government could bar entry of people from six Muslim-majority countries with no connections to the United States.

Trump’s ban was announced on Sept. 24 and replaced two previous versions that had been impeded by federal courts.

The administration’s appeal to the top U.S. court argued that the latest travel ban differed from the previous orders “both in process and in substance” and that the differences showed it “is based on national-security and foreign-affairs objectives, not religious animus.”

It also argued that even if the 9th Circuit ruled to uphold the partial ban, the Supreme Court was likely to overturn that decision as it had “the last time courts barred the President from enforcing entry restrictions on certain foreign nationals in the interest of national security.”

Last week’s appeals court ruling meant the ban would only apply to people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Chad who did not have connections to the United States.

Those connections are defined as family relationships and “formal, documented” relationships with U.S.-based entities such as universities and resettlement agencies. Those with family relationships that would allow entry include grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins of people in the United States.

The state of Hawaii, which sued to block the restrictions, argued that federal immigration law did not give Trump the authority to impose them on six of those countries. The lawsuit did not challenge restrictions toward people from the two other countries listed in Trump’s ban, North Korea and Venezuela.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Honolulu ruled last month that Hawaii was likely to succeed with its argument.

Trump issued his first travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries in January, just a week after he took office, and then issued a revised one after the first was blocked by the courts. The second one expired in September after a long court fight and was replaced with another revised version.

Trump has said the travel ban is needed to protect the United States from attacks by Islamist militants. As a candidate, Trump promised “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

Critics of the travel ban in its various iterations call it a “Muslim ban” that violates the U.S. Constitution by discriminating on the basis of religion.

The 9th Circuit is due to hear oral arguments in the case on Dec. 6. In a parallel case from Maryland, a judge also ruled against the Trump administration and partially blocked the ban from going into effect.

An appeal in the Maryland case is being heard on Dec. 8 by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia. The Maryland case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents several advocacy groups, including the International Refugee Assistance Project.

(Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Trump adds five conservatives to list of possible Supreme Court picks

By James Oliphant and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In a move certain to please conservatives, President Donald Trump on Friday added five names to his list of candidates for a prospective U.S. Supreme Court vacancy as he presses ahead with a campaign to move the federal judiciary to the right.

Two of them are appellate judges who were nominated by Trump earlier this year and confirmed by the Senate: Amy Coney Barrett and Kevin Newsom. Another, Brett Kavanaugh, sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, long viewed as a stepping-stone to the high court.

The others were Britt Grant, a Georgia Supreme Court justice, and Patrick Wyrick, a Oklahoma Supreme Court justice.

There is no current vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court but three justices are 79 or older.

During his presidential campaign last year, Trump identified 20 conservative candidates for the Supreme Court. Upon taking office, he named Neil Gorsuch to the court to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, restoring the Supreme Court’s conservative majority. Gorsuch was confirmed by the Senate in April and has established himself as one of the Supreme Court’s most conservative justices.

Speaking at a Federalist Society conference of conservative legal advocates, White House Counsel Donald McGahn said Trump is “very committed” to appointing judges who are “committed originalists and textualists,” referring to a legal philosophy that relies on the actual wording of laws and the original meaning of the U.S. Constitution.

“They all have paper trails. They all are sitting judges. There is nothing unknown about them. What you see is what you get,” McGahn said.

The five jurists, all with strong conservative credentials, were added to the list with input from conservative leaders, and should another seat on the court open up, Trump will nominate a candidate from the updated list of 25, the White House said.

Leonard Leo, an advisor to the president on Supreme Court nominations, said Trump thought it was time to refresh the original list. “When you’re committed to picking from a list you want to make sure it’s as complete as possible,” Leo said in an interview.

Kavanaugh, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2006 by Republican former President George W. Bush, served as a White House counsel under Bush and worked as an assistant to Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Democratic former President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Grant and Wyrick both joined state challenges to the Affordable Care Act, Democratic former President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, and Obama regulations aimed at reducing emissions from coal-burning power plants, said Carrie Severino, chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal advocacy group.

KENNEDY IS PIVOTAL JUSTICE

The court currently consists of five conservatives and four liberals, with conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy sometimes joining with the liberals on high-profile issues such as gay rights and abortion.

At 81, Kennedy is the second-oldest justice on the court behind liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 84, and some former Kennedy clerks have said he is considering retirement. Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer is 79.

Should any of those step down, Trump would get a historic opportunity to shape the court in a more conservative direction for decades to come. Supreme Court appointments are lifetime jobs.

Conservatives criticize the federal judiciary as too liberal, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the same conference lashed out at “activist judges.”

Trump already has taken steps to make the federal judiciary more conservative, with 14 judicial appointees already confirmed by the Senate and more in the pipeline.

Catherine Glenn Foster, president of the anti-abortion advocacy group Americans United for Life, said she was pleased with the new selections. “From their known records they tend to be strong on recognizing the protections for life,” she said in an interview.

On Friday, Republican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said she would support her party’s Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused by several women of unwanted sexual contact, because of the importance of keeping the Senate under Republican control should another Supreme Court vacancy arise.

(Reporting by James Oliphant and Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Eric Beech; Editing by Will Dunham)

Supreme Court dismisses Hawaii’s challenge to Trump travel ban

International passengers arrive at Washington Dulles International Airport after clearing immigration and customs in Dulles, Virginia, U.S. September 24, 2017. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday formally dropped plans to hear the last remaining challenge to an earlier version of President Donald Trump’s travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries and a ban on refugees, but a fight over the legality of his latest restrictions still could reach the nine justices.

The high court said it will not hear the case brought by Hawaii over the bans, which have expired and been replaced with revised policies. Trump’s 120-day ban on refugees ended on Tuesday and is set to be replaced by a new set of restrictions.

Two lower courts have blocked Trump’s new ban targeting people from eight countries, Trump’s third set of travel restrictions, and the issue could find its way back to the Supreme Court on appeal.

The court on Oct. 10 disposed of the first of two travel ban cases — brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and others in Maryland — after Trump’s earlier 90-day ban on people entering the U.S. from six predominantly Muslim countries expired on Sept. 24. It was a replaced with a modified, open-ended ban involving eight countries.

The justices had been scheduled to hear arguments in the two consolidated on Oct. 10.

Among the issues raised by challengers was whether the travel ban discriminated against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring or disfavoring a particular religion. The same arguments are being used against the new ban.

Trump has said the restrictions were needed to prevent terrorism in the United States.

The expired ban had targeted people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan. The new ban removed Sudan from the list and blocked people from Chad and North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela from entering the United States.

If the new restrictions go into effect, they could block tens of thousands of potential immigrants and visitors to the United States. Trump had promised as a candidate “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Kenya crisis deepens as judges’ absence means vote goes ahead

By George Obulutsa and Katharine Houreld

NAIROBI (Reuters) – Kenya plunged deeper into crisis on Wednesday after a no-show by the majority of Supreme Court judges scuppered an eleventh-hour petition to delay a presidential election and the governor of a volatile opposition region endorsed rebellion against the state.

Within minutes of Supreme Court chief justice David Maraga announcing that five judges had failed to turn up, preventing a quorum, hundreds of supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga took to the streets of Kisumu, his main stronghold.

Riot police used teargas to disperse them.

Odinga had successfully challenged the outcome of an initial ballot in August, which he lost, in the same court.

“We were expecting Maraga to cancel (Thursday’s) elections. This means the push for postponement of the election is on,” said George Mbija, a motorcycle taxi driver in the western city, repeating an Odinga demand for a clear-out of election board officials.

“As we wait for Raila to give us the direction, the status quo remains – No reforms, No election.”

The opposition leader has called on loyalists to boycott Thursday’s vote, because he said the election board’s failure to institute reforms means it will be neither free nor fair.

Kisumu governor Anyang Nyong’o, a hardline Odinga supporter, went a step further.

“If the government subverts the sovereign will of the people … then people are entitled to rebel against this government,” Nyong’o told reporters in Kisumu.

Such comments seem certain to fuel fears of a major confrontation with security forces, already blamed for killing nearly 50 people in Kisumu and Nairobi slums after the canceled August vote.

For many in East Africa’s economic powerhouse, the instability will also rekindle memories of large-scale ethnic violence that killed 1,200 people following a disputed election in 2007.

President Uhuru Kenyatta, who won the annulled election by 1.4 million votes, has made clear he wants the re-run to go ahead and with the Supreme Court – the only institution that can delay it – unable to meet, it appears he will get his way.

“God is great! The evil schemes to deny Kenyans the right to vote kesho (tomorrow) have failed. WE WILL DECIDE and move our country forward tomorrow,” Deputy President William Ruto said in a tweet.

In his announcement on live television, Maraga said one judge was unwell, another was abroad and another was unable to attend after her bodyguard was shot and injured on Tuesday night. It was unclear why the other two were absent.

Election board lawyer Paul Muite said Maraga’s statement meant the election would proceed as planned.

“It means elections are on tomorrow. There is no order stopping the election,” he told the Citizen TV station.

In the capital of Nairobi, hundreds of opposition supporters began to converge on Uhuru Park, waiting for Odinga to give a speech in which he promised to outline his strategy for election day.

“RECIPE FOR CHAOS”

If the election goes ahead, it is likely to deepen the ethnic and political divides that have frequently sparked violence in Kenya, a key Western ally in a turbulent region.

In a related ruling, High Court Judge George Odunga said some local election officials had been appointed in an irregular manner, but to withdraw at the last minute would only make an already dire situation worse.

“For the elections to proceed in the absence of the said officers would in my view constitutional crisis of unimaginable magnitude. Simply put, it would be a recipe for chaos.”

However, he admitted that not dismissing them could form the grounds for legal challenges afterwards. The Supreme Court has said it is prepared to annul the re-run, and send the country of 45 million back to square one, if it does not pass muster.

Opposition lawyers seeking to challenge the Oct. 26 polls could also cite the failure of the election board to hold elections in all parts of the country, if enough polling stations are unable to open.

In Kisumu, returning officer John Ngutai said that attacks by opposition supporters last week meant the election board had only managed to train 250 out of 1,300 staff they needed to hold the election in his constituency.

“Our trainings were disrupted and officials attacked, so some people withdrew,” he said.

Both the European Union and the Carter Center, an election-monitoring group run by former President Jimmy Carter, have said they will reduce their monitoring missions amid rising tensions between the Kenyatta and Odinga camps.

Foreign observers were heavily criticized by the opposition in August for focusing on the vote, rather than the tallying process led by the IEBC election board.

“The current political impasse constrains the IEBC’s ability to conduct a credible election,” the Carter Center said. “There is a serious risk of election-related violence should the elections go forward.”

(Additional reporting by Maggie Fick, David Lewis and John Ndiso; Writing by Ed Cropley; editing by Richard Balmforth)

Supreme Court tosses one of two travel ban challenges

FILE PHOTO - An international traveler arrives after U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order travel ban at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. January 30, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out an appeals court ruling that struck down President Donald Trump’s previous temporary travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority nations countries that has now expired.

In a one-page order, the court acted in one of two cases pending before the nine justices over Trump’s travel ban, a case from Maryland brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued to stop the ban contained in a March executive order.

For now, the court did not act on a separate challenge brought by the state of Hawaii, which the court had also agreed to hear. That case also features a challenge to a separate 120-day refugee ban, which has not yet expired.

That case could yet be dismissed once the refugee ban expires on Oct. 24, meaning the court remains unlikely to issue a final ruling on whether the ban was lawful.

The justices were unanimous in deciding against ruling in the Maryland case, although one of the liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, noted that she would not have wiped out the appeals court ruling.

The justices had been scheduled to hear arguments in the case on Tuesday, but removed it from their calendar after Trump’s 90-day ban expired on Sept. 24 and was replaced with a reworked ban.

The expired ban had targeted people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan. The new open-ended ban, scheduled to take effect on Oct. 18, removed Sudan from the list while blocking people from Chad and North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela from entering the United States.

The Trump administration has urged the court to dismiss both cases while the challengers have asked the justices to rule on the issue.

The Supreme Court in June agreed to take up the two cases and allowed the travel ban, which had been blocked by lower courts, to go into effect with certain changes.

Among the issues raised is whether the travel ban discriminated against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring or disfavoring a particular religion.

The new ban, Trump’s third including one issued in January that was blocked by lower courts, could affect tens of thousands of potential immigrants and visitors to the United States. Opponents have already challenged it in court.

Trump had promised as a candidate “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Challengers urge U.S. Supreme Court to rule on Trump travel ban

International travelers arrive on the day that U.S. President Donald Trump's limited travel ban, approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, goes into effect, at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., June 29, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder - RC1393C705B0

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Challengers to President Donald Trump’s travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries on Thursday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the policy’s legality even though it has been replaced with a revised plan, while his administration asked that the case be dismissed.

In separate letters to the court, the American Civil Liberties Union and the state of Hawaii said the justices should still hear the case, which had been scheduled for arguments next week but was taken off their calendar after the administration announced the reworked ban last month.

The Justice Department urged the justices not to hear the case, to throw out earlier lower court rulings that had invalidated the ban and to order that the legal challenges be dismissed.

Trump’s three successive moves to block entry into the United States by people from several predominantly Muslim countries have been among his most contentious acts since taking office in January. Trump had promised as a candidate “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

The ACLU told the court that the plaintiffs who sued to stop the policy “retain an all-too-real stake in the outcome of the case” even though the original 90-day travel ban on people from six countries expired on Sept. 24. That order was signed by Trump in March and was enacted with some changes in June with the high court’s blessing.

The justices on Sept. 25 asked all the parties to file court papers expressing views on whether the case was moot, meaning there is nothing left to decide, because the temporary ban expired.

That ban had targeted people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan. The new open-ended ban announced in a presidential proclamation on Sept. 24 removed Sudan from the list and blocked people from Chad and North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela from entering the United States.

Among the issues raised by the challengers is whether the ban discriminated against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring or disfavoring a particular religion.

REFUGEE BAN

A separate 120-day ban on refugees entering the United States that was part of Trump’s March order expires on Oct. 24.

Hawaii’s lawyers said that even if the high court decides not to issue a ruling, it should still leave the lower court decisions in place. To do otherwise would allow the administration to effectively win the case by erasing rulings that had gone against Trump, Hawaii argued.

The Justice Department said that it wants the lower court rulings tossed because the challengers will otherwise cite them in new litigation against Trump’s reworked ban.

“The lower courts should be considering challenges to the proclamation anew based on its text, operation, and findings,” Justice Department lawyers wrote.

The weekly behind-closed-doors meeting in which the justices consider next steps in cases before them is scheduled for Friday morning. The court could make an announcement at any time.

The new ban could affect tens of thousands of potential immigrants and visitors to the United States. Opponents have said that like the earlier two orders from January and March, it is still effectively a “Muslim ban.”

Even if the Supreme Court dismisses the older case, it may still have to weigh in on the issue in the future. Various challengers have filed suit against the reworked ban, and those cases potentially could reach the high court.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

UK top court seeks clarity on how to handle EU rulings after Brexit

The Union Flag and European Union flags fly near the Elizabeth Tower, housing the Big Ben bell, during the anti-Brexit 'People's March for Europe', in Parliament Square in central London, Britain September 9, 2017. REUTERS/Tolga Akmen

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Supreme Court would like clearer guidance from parliament on how it should deal with European Union court judgments after Brexit, its new president said on Thursday.

The issue of what weight, if any, judgments of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will have in British law after the United Kingdom leaves the European Union is one of many thorny areas in the Brexit negotiations.

Brenda Hale, who was sworn in as president of the Supreme Court on Monday after serving as one of its justices for 13 years, said she and her colleagues were looking for guidance from parliament on the issue.

“We hope that the European Union Act, when it’s eventually passed, will tell us what we should be doing – giving us the power to take into account, or saying we must take into account, or saying we must ignore,” she told reporters.

“Whatever parliament decides we should do, we would like to be told because then we’ll get on and do it.”

A government policy paper issued in August said Britain wished to leave the “direct jurisdiction” of the ECJ while also recognizing that future civil judicial cooperation would need to take into account “regional legal arrangements” such as the ECJ.

The European Union says that for certain issues, such as the rights of EU citizens in Britain, the ECJ must continue to have its say – a stance strongly rejected by the most ardent advocates of Brexit.

Hale said the government policy papers issued over the summer were “at quite a high level of generality” and described them as aspirational.

But she praised the formulation used by Prime Minister Theresa May in a major speech on Brexit in Florence on Sept. 22. May said that where there was uncertainty around EU law, she wanted UK courts to be able to “take into account” ECJ judgments.

“‘Take account’ is quite useful because it does give one the power to take it into account, but also the power to say ‘for the following good reasons, we think something else,'” said Hale.

Her deputy, Jonathan Mance, said the form of words used in the EU Withdrawal Bill currently going through parliament was “a weaker formula”.

The bill says that British courts “need not have regard to anything done on or after exit day by the European Court … but may do so if it considers it appropriate to do so”.

(Editing by Stephen Addison)

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