Lady killers
Supremes’ ‘shameful’ hatchet job on Liberty upholds Trump’s Muslim ban
The Supreme Court handed President Trump a major victory Tuesday by upholding his controversial Muslim travel ban — a ruling he hailed as “vindication” for a policy that's been trashed as racist.
The 5-4 decision is the court's first substantive ruling on a Trump administration policy.
Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by his four conservative colleagues, penned the majority opinion. He wrote that the ban “does not exceed any textual limit on the President's authority” and that Trump was within his rights to order it up.
In a scathing dissent she summarized aloud in court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, "History will not look kindly on the court's misguided decision today, nor should it."
Trump weighed in moments after the decision was announced on Twitter.
“SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow!” he wrote.
In a formal response, Trump hailed the decision as "a moment of profound vindication" following "months of hysterical commentary from the media and Democratic politicians who refuse to do what it takes to secure our border and our country."
Democrats maintained the policy wasn't about safety — it was about discrimination.
“The Trump travel ban is a gross violation of our American values, and the Supreme Court's ruling along partisan lines does nothing to change that," Gov. Cuomo said. “This shameful and bigoted policy is nothing but a thinly veiled attempt to govern by hate and division and continue the federal government's assault on immigrants.”
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Mich), one of two Muslim members of the House, blasted the decision as one that "undermines the core value of religious tolerance on which America was founded."
The case, first filed by the state of Hawaii against the third iteration of Trump's ban, wound its way up to the nation's highest court earlier this year.
Opponents calling for the end of the travel restrictions argued that it was motivated by racism and religious discrimination and hoped the Supreme Court would uphold lower court rulings striking down the ban.
The contentious order was one of President's first actions as President and followed months of anti-Muslim comments from Trump on the campaign trail.
Protests erupted at airports across the country last January as legal U.S. residents with green cards were taken into custody and others were detained after the order was unveiled.
In the 17 months since the commander-in-chief signed off on the first decree, federal judges in Hawaii, California, Maryland and Virginia have all rejected various versions of the executive order as unconstitutional.
The battle over the ban began in earnest when the first executive order was scuttled by lower courts. Months later, the second was allowed to partially go into effect by the Supreme Court last year. It expired in September.
The current ban, which Trump has called a "watered-down" version, has been in effect since December and is designed to be permanent.
Much like its predecessors, travel ban 3.0 blocks almost all immigrants, visitors and refugees from five mainly Muslim countries as well as travelers from North Korea and government officials from Venezuela.
The mostly-Muslim nations are Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch joined Roberts in the majority with liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting.
Sotomayor wrote in her dissent
that based on the evidence in the case "a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus."
She said her colleagues arrived at the opposite result by "ignoring the facts, misconstruing our legal precedent, and turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering the Proclamation inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens."
Roberts was careful not to endorse Trump's provocative comments about immigration or Muslims in his opinion.
"We express no view on the soundness of the policy," Roberts wrote.
However, much of the fight before the Supreme Court centered around the President's own Islamophobic comments on the campaign trail.
Trump campaigned on calls to bar Muslims from entering the U.S. and made several incendiary statements about Islam.
"I think Islam hates us," Trump said in 2016. “There's something there that — there's a tremendous hatred there. There's a tremendous hatred.”
Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, U.S. solicitor general Noel Francisco said that the President's campaign statements "should be out of bounds” and asserted that the ban was a national security necessity.
The majority largely ignored Trump's statements, and focused on the order itself, which they found was a legitimate exercise of his presidential authority.
Critics blasted the court's decision as protesters chanting “No ban, no wall” gathered Tuesday outside the Supreme Court building.
Mayor de Blasio said the ban “is institutionalized Islamophobia, promoted under the guise of national security.
The American Civil Liberties Union noted that in 1944 the Supreme Court upheld the executive order which led to Japanese-Americans being held in internment camps during World War II.
Arab American Institute Executive Director Maya Berry said that the “policy is not rationally related to national security interests and will continue to tear families apart while undermining America's standing in the world.”