Northeastern joins amicus brief to Supreme Court challenging Trump administration travel ban

Northeastern University has joined 30 other leading American universities in filing an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the Trump administration’s executive order on immigration.

The administration’s revised order, issued in March, blocks citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the U.S. Two federal appeals courts suspended the revised travel ban, but a Supreme Court decision in June allowed the ban to move forward on a limited basis.

In the brief, filed Monday, Sept. 18, the universities—collectively, amici—state that “The benefits of international diversity in American higher education thus inure not only to colleges and universities themselves, but to the country and indeed the world as a whole.”

The brief further argues that “The Order directly threatens amici’s ability to attract persons not only from the six specified countries, but from around the world. The Order contradicts the values that American colleges and universities have traditionally touted as benefits of studying and working here, including the freedom of religion and equality embodied in the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”

The 31 universities that signed onto the brief are Boston University, Brandeis University, Brown University, Bucknell University, Carnegie Mellon University, Case Western Reserve University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Emory University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Middlebury College, Northeastern University, Northwestern University, Princeton University, Rice University, Stanford University, Tufts University, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University, Washington University in St. Louis, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Yale University.

The group of 31 universities filed a similar brief in March with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and in April with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Both of those cases are now before the Supreme Court and are the basis for the latest amicus brief.

In February, Northeastern also jointly filed an amicus brief with six other Massachusetts universities to the U.S. District Court opposing the administration’s travel ban.