Breaking News: Supreme Court Holds that U.S. Citizen Spouse Lacks a Liberty Interest to Justify Judicial Review of Denial of Visa to Noncitizen Spouse

In Department of State v/ Munoz, the Supreme Court today held that a citizen does not have a fundamental liberty interest in her noncitizen spouse being admitted to the country. The Court reversed the Ninth Circuit.  Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh.  Justice Gorsuch concurred in the judgment.  Justice Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Kagan and Jackson joined.

A telling passage from the syllabus:

From this Nation’s beginnings, the admission of noncitizens into the country was characterized as “of favor [and] not of right.” J. Madison, Report of 1800. And when Congress began to restrict immigration in the late 19th century, the laws it enacted provided no exceptions for citizens’ spouses. See, e.g., Page Act of 1875, 18 Stat. 477–478; Immigration Act of 1882, 22 Stat. 214; Immigration Act of 1891, 26 Stat. 1084. And while Congress has, on occasion, extended special immigration treatment to marriage, see, e.g., War Brides Act of 1945, 59 Stat. 659, it has never made spousal immigration a matter of right.  This Court has not interfered with such policy choices, despite their interference with the spousal relationship. Thus in United States ex rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 338 U. S. 537, the Court reaffirmed, in the case of a noncitizen spouse who was denied admission for confidential security reasons, the longstanding principle “that the United States can, as a matter of public policy . . . forbid aliens or classes of aliens from coming within [its] borders,” and “[n]o limits can be put by the courts upon” that power. Wong Wing v. United States, 163 U. S. 228, 237. 

KJ