In International Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump, the Fourth Circuit affirmed a Maryland district judge’s nationwide injunction halting enforcement of the president’s order. Chief Judge Roger Gregory, writing for the 10-3 majority, acknowledged that the “stated national security interest is, on its face, a valid reason” for the order. But he went on to conclude that the administration acted in bad faith based on, among other things, “then-candidate Trump’s numerous campaign statements expressing animus towards the Islamic faith.”
Whatever one may think of that conclusion as a political matter, as a legal matter the judges overstepped their bounds. The controlling case is Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972), in which the Supreme Court rejected a petition from American scholars seeking admission to the country on behalf of a foreign colleague who had been kept out because he advocated communism. The plaintiffs argued that the government’s refusal to admit their colleague on account of his views violated their First Amendment rights. The justices upheld his exclusion and made three things clear: first, aliens have no constitutional right to enter the U.S.; second, American citizens have no constitutional right to demand entry for aliens; and third, the decision to deny admission to an alien must be upheld if it is based on “a facially legitimate and bona fide reason.”
The high court has repeatedly reaffirmed and followed Mandel. Fiallo v. Bell (1977) rejected a challenge to immigration preferences that openly favored legitimate over illegitimate children and female U.S. nationals over male—distinctions that almost certainly would have been found unconstitutional in a domestic-policy context. In Kerry v. Din (2015), the justices upheld visa denial for the complainant’s husband, who had been a member of the Taliban. When the executive branch makes a decision “on the basis of a facially legitimate and bona fide reason,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, quoting Mandel, the judiciary can “ ‘neither look behind the exercise of that discretion, nor test it by balancing its justification against’ the constitutional interests of the citizens the visa denial might implicate.”
In holding that Mr. Trump acted in bad faith, the Fourth Circuit fundamentally misconstrued Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Din, which nowhere suggested that, once the government had articulated a facially legitimate purpose, the courts could weigh whether there might have been an additional, improper purpose. As the Fourth Circuit dissenters explained, Mandel requires only a facially legitimate and facially bona fide reason.
Any other standard would constitute an invitation to the judiciary to direct the nation’s foreign and defense policies.
The defining characteristic of Trump’s presidency so far has been the exposure of just how hollow and shallowly partisan our institutions — and those directing them — have become.