Supreme Decision: The Supreme Court is set to rule on several important cases this term, including whether President Trump's travel ban is constitutional.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: NATIONAL

The Supreme Court, by tradition, returns from its summer recess on the first Monday in October to begin a new term. Right off the bat, the justices will tackle several cases that raise important constitutional questions.

This will be the first full term with Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on the Court. President Trump nominated Gorsuch last January to fill the seat vacated by the death a year earlier of Justice Antonin Scalia; Gorsuch took his seat as one of the court's nine justices in April (see graphic, facing page) after the Senate confirmed him.

Among the most anticipated cases on the Court's docket are ones that deal with the constitutionality of President Trump's temporary travel ban on people from six majority-Muslim countries; the right to privacy in the digital age; limits on the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom; and the legitimacy of the political practice of gerrymandering.

Here's what you need to know to understand those key cases.

Is President Trump's travel ban constitutional? Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project

This case pits two important constitutional concerns against each other. The Court will have to weigh the president's power to safeguard America's national security versus the First Amendment guarantee that people won't face discrimination based on their religious beliefs.

"It's one of the most important cases about religious liberty that the Supreme Court has ever heard," says David Gans of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a legal think tank in Washington, D.C. "It poses the question: Can the president write religious discrimination into our immigration laws?"

The case stems from an executive order that President Trump issued with the intention of shutting down travel to the U.S. from six majority-Muslim countries--Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen--for 90 days. The order also temporarily blocked entry of refugees from any nation.

Trump said the order was necessary to give the Department of Homeland Security time to evaluate and address problems in the vetting process for visitors from countries it considers dangerous.

"We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas," Trump said.

The travel ban has its roots in a presidential campaign promise. In December 2015, then-candidate Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown" of Muslim immigration in response to the threat posed by terrorist groups such as ISIS (see "Are We Winning the War Against ISIS?, p. 14). Earlier that month, a Muslim-American gunman claiming to be acting on behalf of ISIS killed 14 people at an office party in San Bernardino, California. Trump's proposal resonated with many Americans who were increasingly fearful about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

After human rights groups filed lawsuits to overturn the travel ban, federal appeals courts blocked two different versions of the ban, ruling that it discriminated based on religion, in violation of the First Amendment, and that it exceeded the authority given to the president by federal immigration laws. The Trump administration appealed the federal court rulings, and in June the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. In the meantime, it allowed some parts of the travel ban to take effect.

Those who oppose the travel ban say the government has provided little evidence for how the ban would protect U.S. citizens. No one from the six targeted countries has killed an American on U.S. soil in a terrorist attack since at least 1975, according to a study by the Cato Institute.

But those who support the ban say the enormity of the potential security risks makes the restrictions reasonable.

"The vast majority of people coming from these countries don't pose a threat, but it only takes a few people getting through the net to do an awful lot of damage," says Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that favors tighter restrictions on immigration.

Justices will hear oral arguments in the case October 10.

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