The Ninth Circuit Banned Trump’s Ban Because It Hurts Science
Don’t mess with science. That’s the message of the Ninth Circuit’s decision tonight denying the Justice Department’s request to reinstate President Trump’s travel ban. At a moment when the word “science” itself has become intensely politicized, it’s perhaps ironic that the fight over the immigration executive order came down not to the human rights of refugees but one state’s ability to maintain a high-functioning scientific community.
That’s because the Ninth Circuit wasn’t ruling on the order itself, exactly. It was ruling on part of a lower court’s finding against the ban—specifically whether the state of Washington, which had brought suit against it, actually had the right to do so. In legal terms that’s called “standing,” and the circuit judges ruled unanimously that the attorneys general of Washington and Minnesota did, indeed, have the standing to bring the suit in the first place.
The fight came down not to human rights but one state’s ability to maintain a high-functioning scientific community.
But the cool part is why those states had standing. The court found the ban harmed students, teachers, and scientists. “The States contend that the travel prohibitions harmed the States’ university employees and students, separated families, and stranded the States’ residents abroad,” the court found. “These are substantial injuries and even irreparable harms.”
Like what? The judges cited two scholars and three prospective employees who were supposed to visit Washington State University but couldn’t because of the ban. The court also pointed to two medicine and science interns barred from starting work at the University of Washington, even though the school had already paid for their visas. “Both schools have a mission of ‘global engagement’ and rely on such visiting students, scholars, and faculty to advance their educational goals,” the judges wrote.
And that’s just seven people, barely a fraction of the researchers affected. More than half of country’s post-graduate scholars in science, tech, engineering, and medicine are immigrants, according to a study from the Pew Research Center. “This is horrible. It’s reprehensible. It’s counterproductive. It makes no sense,” Erik Sontheimer, a geneticist at the University of Massachusetts, told WIRED last week after the ban stranded one of his students from Iran.
Since the harms to scholars gave the state of Washington standing, the judges went on to consider the the state’s overall arguments against the ban. “The Government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the Order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States,” the judges wrote. In the law, as in science, evidence matters.