Supreme Court upholds President Donald J. Trump's Travel Ban

Story by The Hill
Written by Lydia Wheeler
Video Link: https://www.yahoo.com/news/marker-shame-democratic-lawmakers-rip-supreme-courts-travel-ban-decision-172209635.html

The Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling on Tuesday upheld President Trump’s ban on nationals from five Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

In a majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court said the president has broad discretion under immigration law to suspend the entry of people into the United States.

“The president lawfully exercised that discretion based on his findings — following a worldwide, multi-agency review — that entry of the covered aliens would be detrimental to the national interest,” Roberts wrote in the opinion.

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.

The President immediately took to Twitter to announce the news.

“SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow!” he tweeted.

The decision is a significant victory for Trump, who issued the first travel ban — which detractors described as a Muslim ban — just seven days into his term.

It led to massive protests at airports across the country and mass confusion over who could be let into the United States.

A series of court battles followed as the administration issued revisals of its original proposals.

The latest policy, issued by presidential proclamation, limited travel into the United States by people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen. Chad was also originally included, but the White House decided to drop it from the list in April.
The proclamation also banned immigrants from North Korea and individuals affiliated with certain government agencies in Venezuela, but those restrictions were not blocked by the courts.

The state of Hawaii, which led the challenge, argued Trump’s now-indefinite policy discriminates against immigrants based on their religion in violation of immigration law. Additionally, they argued the policy exceeds the president’s authority and is unconstitutional because it establishes a disfavored religion.

Hawaii pointed to statements Trump made on the campaign trail and since taking office to prove his animus toward Muslim people.

But the court said the challengers had not demonstrated a likelihood of success on their constitutional claim.

Sotomayor disagreed in a dissenting opinion, which Ginsburg joined.

She said that, based on the evidence, a reasonable observer would conclude that the proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus.

“Ultimately, what began as a policy explicitly 'calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States' has since morphed into a ‘Proclamation’ putatively based on national-security concerns,” she said. “But this new window dressing cannot conceal an unassailable fact: the words of the President and his advisers create the strong perception that the Proclamation is contaminated by impermissible discriminatory animus against Islam and its followers.”

Roberts, however, said reviewing the proclamation and Trump’s comments under a “reasonable observer” standard is problematic.

He said the court instead has to apply a rational basis for review, which considers whether the entry policy is plausibly related to the government’s stated objective to protect the country and improve vetting processes.

“Because there is persuasive evidence that the entry suspension has a legitimate grounding in national security concerns, quite apart from any religious hostility, we must accept that independent justification,” he said.

The ban was drafted after the first order Trump issued was blocked by lower courts and his second ban expired before reaching the Supreme Court last term. That order banned people from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan from coming to the United States for 90 days and banned all refugees for 120 days.

The Supreme Court gave Trump a partial win in January when it allowed the full ban to go into effect after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the president could only ban people if they lack a bona fide relationship to a person or entity in the United States.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), one of two Muslim members of Congress, tweeted that he was saddened by the decision.

"Today's decision undermines the core value of religious tolerance on which America was founded," he said in a statement. "I am deeply disappointed that this ruling gives legitimacy to discrimination and Islamophobia."

Civil rights advocates, meanwhile, excoriated the court.

“This ruling will go down in history as one of the Supreme Court’s great failures,” Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

“It repeats the mistakes of the Korematsu decision upholding Japanese-American imprisonment and swallows wholesale government lawyers’ flimsy national security excuse for the ban instead of taking seriously the president’s own explanation for his actions,” he said.
______________________________________________
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/marker-shame-democratic-lawmakers-rip-supreme-courts-travel-ban-decision-172209635.html