The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in a split decision that the government did not owe a naturalized citizen an extensive explanation when her husband's application for a visa was rejected over terrorism concerns.
According to the ruling, it was enough for the government to declare the terrorism concerns were the reason to deny an immigrant passage,
reports The Washington Post, and that specific allegations that the applicant could contest were not necessary to list.
The ruling was made in the case of Fauzia Din, who settled in California in 2000 with her family. She became a naturalized citizen in 2007, one year after she returned to Afghanistan to marry Kanishka Berashk, whom she had known for several years.
Her husband has worked as a clerk in the Afghan government during and after the Taliban came into power and the couple started the process to bring him into the United States. In 2009, Berashk’s application was rejected, and the embassy told him that he was ineligible because of "terrorist activities" but would not be more specific, the Post reports.
Din sued and the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled the government owed her a "facially legitimate reason" for denying her husband's request.
But the Supreme Court's conservative justices said Din could not prevail, while disagreeing on the reason, but the court's liberals said her right to marry who she wished requires the government to give her a better explanation about why her husband's visa was rejected.
Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out that the government has not refused to recognize their marriage, and she is "free to live with her husband anywhere in the world that both individuals are permitted to reside."
The United States, though, has not expelled Din but determined that he was engaged in terrorist activities and denied admission into the United States.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who agreed with the case's outcome, said the court did not need to determine Din did not have a constitutional right to due process.
"The government satisfied due process when it notified Din’s husband that his visa was denied under the immigration statute’s terrorism bar": said Kennedy, with Justice Samuel Alito Jr. agreeing.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan disagreed, with Breyer writing that the Constitution provides "some form of procedural protection to a citizen threatened with government deprivation of her freedom to live together with her spouse in America."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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