We are proud to support our clients’ continuing efforts to educate the federal courts about the flaws in – and serious harm caused by – the Travel Ban
Hangley Aronchick attorney Robert Wiygul recently filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of a group of law professors in the matter of Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. State of Hawaii, et al., which was argued before the Supreme Court of the United States today as the last case to be heard during the Court’s current Term. The case involves the Trump Administration’s Proclamation No. 9645, more commonly known as the Travel Ban, which, among other things, indefinitely prohibits all immigration from certain predominantly Muslim countries, and also prohibits all or many classes of non-immigrant visas for nationals of certain predominantly Muslim countries.
The amici represented by Hangley Aronchick are experts in immigration, constitutional, and family law who are concerned that the Travel Ban violates constitutional and statutory law protecting the rights of American citizens and lawful permanent residents to family relationships and family integrity. “We are proud to support our clients’ continuing efforts to educate the federal courts about the flaws in – and serious harm caused by – the Travel Ban, which are issues at the heart of our clients’ scholarly expertise,” said Wiygul. The current brief is the fifth appellate brief – and the third Supreme Court brief – that Wiygul has submitted during the ongoing litigation over the Travel Ban. After the Trump Administration withdrew its initial version of the Ban, Wiygul filed an amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit, successfully arguing that the Administration’s second version was also unlawful. After Wiygul filed another amicus brief in the Government’s appeal to the Supreme Court, the Government issued a third version of the travel ban, and the Supreme Court appeal was dismissed as moot. Wiygul then filed another successful amicus brief in the Ninth Circuit, which ruled that the third version of the ban was, once again, unlawful. The Government then took its current appeal to the Supreme Court.
The current amicus brief explains that, given the severe burden that the Travel Ban imposes on the legally protected family relationships of American citizens and permanent residents, serious judicial scrutiny is required. And the plaintiffs are right, the brief maintains, that the Proclamation should be struck down: “By targeting persons from six predominantly Muslim countries after making a series of statement expressing hostility to Muslims, the President has used race, religion, and nationality to discriminate unlawfully against the family members of certain American citizens and residents… By targeting noncitizens on these invidious grounds, and then ‘slicing deeply into the family itself,’ … the Proclamation also violates the dignity and integrity of family relationships as protected by the Constitution and federal statutes. The Proclamation offends established constitutional and statutory law and cannot survive meaningful judicial review.”
Wiygul is a member of the Supreme Court bar and actively involved in the firm’s vibrant appellate practice. Thus far in 2018, Wiygul has won a reversal, by the Pennsylvania Superior Court, of a nearly $4 million judgment against the firm’s client, a landlord in a commercial real estate dispute; obtained a Ninth Circuit ruling, on behalf of an insurance company, that it did not owe coverage for the costs incurred by a corporate policyholder in defending against a False Claims Act investigation by the DOJ; and won an affirmance by the Pennsylvania Superior Court of a judgment in favor of a different insurer in complex litigation brought by a railroad company policyholder seeking millions of dollars of coverage for environmental contamination.
On the amicus brief with Wiygul is Hangley Aronchick attorney Mark Aronchick. Aronchick also filed briefs before the United States Supreme Court earlier this year on behalf of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, in a successful defense of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s decision striking down Pennsylvania’s gerrymandered congressional districts.
The Hangley Aronchick team also included paralegal Bob Hrouda.
