Make Immigration Great Again: How Morales-Santana Could Signal the End of Sexist Immigration Law and Provide a Way to Fight the Travel Ban

Abstract

Gender plays a surprisingly important, and arguably unjust, role in immigration law. Explicit gender divisions and gender stereotypes are widespread. However, prior to the Supreme Court's recent decision in Morales-Santana, these distinctions have been consistently upheld. Consequently, despite the limited scope of Morales-Santana (it only applies to a single INA provision and does not overturn the Court’s previous cases), the case is extremely important. It indicates that the Court is no longer willing to excuse or attempt to rationalize immigration law’s widespread gender discrimination. Moreover, given immigration law’s long history of gender bias, the possibilities for discrimination claims are numerous and thus, it may be no coincidence that Morales-Santana, which finally confirms gender as an effective means of challenging discriminatory immigration laws, was decided only days before Trump v. International Refugee Assistance Project. International Refugee limited the scope of the government’s proposed travel ban and demonstrated the Court’s concern with the current administration’s attempts to restrict immigrant rights.Reading the two cases together, this essay suggests that gender discrimination claims may provide a new and effective means of challenging the travel ban, particularly if the current race and nationality based challenges fail.

Keywords: immigration, travel ban, gender discrimination, gender, national security