Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/17pdf/17-965_h315.pdf
Page Number: 31.0

26 

TRUMP v. HAWAII 

Opinion of the Court 

sion of particular foreign nationals.  See Kerry v. Din, 576 
U. S. ___, ___ (2015) (plurality opinion) (slip op., at 15); id., 
at  ___  (KENNEDY,  J.,  concurring  in  judgment)  (slip  op.,
at  1);  Kleindienst  v.  Mandel,  408  U. S.  753,  762  (1972).
Likewise,  one  of  our  prior  stay  orders  in  this  litigation 
recognized  that  an  American  individual  who  has  “a  bona
fide relationship with a particular person seeking to enter
the country . . . can legitimately claim concrete hardship if
that person is excluded.”  Trump v. IRAP, 582 U. S., at ___ 
(slip op., at 13).

The Government responds that plaintiffs’ Establishment 
Clause claims are not justiciable because the Clause does 
not give them a legally protected interest in the admission 
of particular foreign nationals.  But that argument—which 
depends upon the scope of plaintiffs’ Establishment Clause 
rights—concerns  the  merits  rather  than  the  justiciability 
of  plaintiffs’  claims.    We  therefore  conclude  that  the  indi-
vidual plaintiffs have Article III standing to challenge the
exclusion  of  their  relatives  under  the  Establishment 
Clause. 

B 

The First Amendment provides, in part, that “Congress 
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  Our cases recog-
nize  that  “[t]he  clearest  command  of  the  Establishment
Clause  is  that  one  religious  denomination  cannot  be  offi-
cially  preferred  over  another.”    Larson  v.  Valente,  456 
U. S.  228,  244  (1982).    Plaintiffs  believe  that  the  Procla-
mation  violates  this  prohibition  by  singling  out  Muslims 
for  disfavored  treatment.    The  entry  suspension,  they 
contend,  operates  as  a  “religious  gerrymander,”  in  part
because most of the countries covered by the Proclamation 
have  Muslim-majority  populations.    And  in  their  view, 
deviations  from  the  information-sharing  baseline  criteria 
suggest  that  the  results  of  the  multi-agency  review  were