We will hear argument first this morning in case 23334, Department of State versus Munoz.

Mr. Gannon.

Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court.

Last fiscal year, the Department of State issued 11 million immigrant and non-immigrant visas.

It also refused 62,000 visa applications on the basis of one or more of the admissibility grounds in 8 U.S.C. 1182A,

including applications from approximately 5,400 non-citizens seeking to live with their U.S. citizen,

spouses or fiancée. Under the doctrine of consular non-reviewability, a non-citizen outside the United States cannot obtain

judicial review of a consular officer's denial of a visa. Congress has not provided for that form of

review in the INA, and when it added new visa-related provisions in 2002, it reaffirmed that it was not providing an end run around that, nor is an end run available when a U.S.

citizen family member, here the non-citizen spouse, wants the non-citizen to be admitted into

the United States. As the carry against in plurality concluded in 2015, that is not a liberty

interest protected by the due process clause, and the U.S. citizen is affected

only indirectly by the government's action against the non-citizen.

Thus, respondent Munoz cannot challenge the denial of her husband's visa application

any more than she could challenge a decision at the end of removal proceeding that he will be removed from the United States or at the end of

a criminal trial that he would be sent to a prison far across the country. With respect to the

second question presented, even assuming that Respondent Munoz has a sufficient constitutional

interest to trigger any judicial review, the court should at the very least hold that the State

Department satisfied

the Mandel standard.

The consular officer provided a facially legitimate and bona fide reason by citing a valid

statutory ground of inadmissibility, the unlawful activity bar, just as Justice Kennedy's

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