Supreme Court Blocks Ruling That Eased Refugee Ban

The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to maintain its restrictive policy on refugees. The justices on Tuesday agreed to an administration request to block a lower court ruling that would have eased the refugee ban and allowed up to 24,000 refugees to enter the country before the end of October, the AP reports. The order was not the court's last word on the travel policy: The justices are scheduled to hear arguments on Oct. 10 on the legality of the bans on travelers from six mostly Muslim countries and refugees anywhere in the world. But it's unclear what will be left for the court to decide. The 90-day travel ban lapses in late September and the 120-day refugee ban expires a month later.

The justices said in June that the administration could not enforce the bans against people who have a "bona fide" relationship with people or entities in the United States. A panel of the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district judge's order that would have allowed refugees to enter the US if a resettlement agency had agreed to take them in. The administration objected and the high court's unsigned, one-sentence order agreed, at least for now. The administration did not ask the Supreme Court to block the appeals court's ruling that grandparents and cousins of people already in the US can't be excluded from the country under the travel ban. (More Trump travel ban stories.)