Supreme Court upholds Trump’s travel ban, 5-4
Conservatives say presidential power not undermined by anti-Muslim statements
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld President Donald Trump’s ban on travel from mostly Muslim nations, delivering a robust endorsement of Trump’s power to control the flow of immigration into the United States at a time of political upheaval about the treatment of migrants at the Mexican border.
In a 5-4 vote, the court’s conservatives said the president’s statutory power over immigration was not undermined by his history of incendiary statements about the dangers he said Muslims pose to Americans.
Trump, who has battled court challenges to the travel ban since the first days of his administration, hailed the decision to uphold his third version of an executive order as a “tremendous victory” and promised to continue using his office to defend the country against terrorism and extremism.
“This ruling is also 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,” the president said in a statement issued by the White House soon after
the ruling.
The vindication came even as Trump is reeling from weeks of controversy over his decision to impose zero tolerance at the United States’ southern border, leading to politically searing images of children being separated from their parents as families cross into the United States without proper documentation.
Trump and his advisers have long argued that presidents are given vast authority to reshape the way the United States controls its borders. The president’s attempts to do that began with the travel ban and continues today with his demand for an end to “catch and release” of immigrants in the country illegally.
In remarks during a meeting with lawmakers Tuesday, Trump hailed the court’s ruling and vowed to continue fighting for a wall across the Mexican border.
“We have to be tough and we have to be safe and we have to be secure,” he said, adding that construction of the border wall “stops the drugs. It stops people we don’t want to have.”
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said that Trump had ample statutory authority to make national security judgments in the realm of immigration. And he rejected a constitutional challenge to Trump’s latest executive order on the matter, his third, this one issued as a proclamation in September.
But the court’s liberals decried the decision. In a passionate and searing dissent from the bench, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision was no better than Korematsu v. United States, the 1944 decision that endorsed the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
By upholding the travel ban, she said, the court “merely replaces one gravely wrong decision with another.”
Critics of the president’s travel ban also decried the court’s ruling. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., wrote that “today is a sad day for American institutions, and for all religious minorities who have ever sought refuge in a land promising freedom.”
The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty said in a statement that “we are deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court’s refusal to repudiate policy rooted in animus against Muslims.”
Roberts acknowledged that Trump had made many statements concerning his desire to impose a “Muslim ban.”
“The issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements,” the chief justice wrote. “It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility.”
“In doing so,” he wrote, “we must consider not only the statements of a particular president, but also the authority of the presidency itself.”
He concluded that the proclamation, viewed in isolation, was neutral and justified by national security concerns. “The proclamation is expressly premised on legitimate purposes: preventing entry of nationals who cannot be adequately vetted and inducing other nations to improve their practices,” he wrote.
In January, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to Trump’s third and most considered entry ban, issued as a presidential proclamation in September. It initially restricted travel from eight nations, six of them predominantly Muslim — Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad, Venezuela and North Korea. Chad was later removed from the list.
The restrictions varied in their details, but, for the most part, citizens of the countries were forbidden from emigrating to the United States and many of them are barred from working, studying or vacationing here. In December, the Supreme Court allowed the ban to go into effect while legal challenges moved forward.
Hawaii, several individuals and a Muslim group challenged the latest ban’s limits on travel from the predominantly Muslim nations; they did not object to the portions concerning North Korea and Venezuela. They said the latest ban, like the earlier ones, was tainted by religious animus and not adequately justified by national security concerns.
The challengers prevailed before a U.S. District Court there and before a threejudge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.
The appeals court ruled that Trump had exceeded the authority Congress had given him over immigration and had violated a part of the immigration laws barring discrimination in the issuance of visas.