Princeton University Joins Brief Opposing Immigration Ban

PRINCETON, NJ — Princeton University and 30 other colleges and universities have joined a brief challenging the Trump Administration’s travel ban on six majority Muslim countries, preventing residents of those countries from entering the United States, the university announced this week.

The university and the other schools filed an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. The court is scheduled to hear the issue on Oct. 10. In March, the Trump Administration revised its ban on allowing citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen to come into the country.
Federal appeals courts blocked the ban, but in June, the Supreme Court ruled the ban could take effect on a limited basis.

The travel ban “both threatens American higher education and offends important, defining principles of our country,” the colleges and universities say in the brief. “The Order directly threatens amici’s ability to attract persons not only from the six specified countries, but from around the world. The Order contradicts the values that American colleges and universities have traditionally touted as benefits of studying and working here, including the freedom of religion and equality embodied in the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”

Princeton joins Boston University, Brandeis University, Brown University, Bucknell University, Carnegie Mellon University, Case Western Reserve University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Middlebury College, Northeastern University, Northwestern University, Rice University, Stanford University, Tufts University, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University, Washington University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Yale University in the brief.

These same schools filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in March, after the Trump Administration appealed a Maryland federal judge’s nationwide preliminary injunction against the travel ban. They also filed a brief in April with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in connection with a similar challenge. Those cases are both now before the Supreme Court.

Patch file photo