The Supreme Court Has Officially Had Enough Of Donald Trump’s Excuses

Clearly, the court doesn’t think highly of the administration’s scheme to evade due process, reject the power of courts to compel the return of detainees sent overseas and prevent detainees from contesting their detention through habeas corpus.

And yet, that’s not the end of the court’s rejection of the administration’s actions under the Alien Enemies Act. The court also rejected the ruse the administration has been using to try to stop courts from designating all detainees subject to the Alien Enemies Act as a class of people facing a similar predicament when an individual or group of individuals brings a case.

To avoid this class certification, which could lead to protection from removal for all men detained in a judicial district, the administration has been claiming that it will not subject the individual detainees who bring a suit to removal proceedings while their case moves forward. This, they argue, means that the petitioners and the rest of the detainees no longer face a similar threat of removal and are, therefore, not in a class together.

“[W]e reject the proposition that a class-action defendant may defeat class treatment, if it is otherwise proper, by promising as a matter of grace to treat named plaintiffs differently,” the decision states. “And we are skeptical of the self-defeating notion that the right to the notice necessary to ‘actually seek habeas relief,’ must itself be vindicated through individual habeas petitions, somehow by plaintiffs who have not received notice.”