Trump takes travel ban back to SCOTUS to appeal grandparents ruling

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The Trump Department of Justice on Friday evening asked the Supreme Court to overturn a federal judge's ruling that the travel ban cannot be used to exclude grandparents of U.S. residents who hail from the six majority-Muslim nations the order targets.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson said in his decision Thursday that "common sense ... dictates that close family members be defined to include grandparents. Indeed, grandparents are the epitome of close family members." The DOJ argues that Watson's ruling "empties the [Supreme] Court's [previous travel ban] decision of meaning, as it encompasses not just 'close' family members but virtually all family members."

Past immigration laws have excluded grandparents from the "close family" category, which is limited to "parent (including parent-in-law), spouse, fiancé, child, adult son or daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, sibling (whether whole or half), and step relationships."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.