The Supreme Court, on a roll with very bad rulings that include enabling anti-LGBTQ discrimination on basis of “religious freedom,” curbing voting rights, and siding with anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, has dealt another devastating blow to civil liberties and basic decency. On Tuesday, the Court upheld Donald Trump’s ban on immigrants and refugees from six Muslim-majority countries—Libya, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and Chad—and North Korea and Venezuela. The ban was a revised, third version of Trump’s original travel ban, which was enacted after he campaigned on and repeatedly stated his desire to ban Muslims from entering the United States.
Noting that the Immigration and Nationality Act imbues the president with power over “whether and when to suspend entry, whose entry to suspend, for how long, and on what conditions,” the decision finds that, based on an internal review, Trump “found that restricting entry of aliens who could not be vetted with adequate information was in the national interest.”
Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” as he stated during his campaign in 2015. In January, former Trump advisor and current legal counsel Rudy Giuliani told Fox News that Trump sought his advice for how to “legally” enable him to implement a “Muslim ban.” His first iteration failed legal challenges, but the Trump administration persisted twice more, eventually molding its policy into one that Chief Justice John Roberts found “neutral on its face” that has “a sufficient national security justification to survive rational basis review.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg issued the dissent. “A reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus,” they stated, and added that “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.”
Even Trump is surprised that his evil scam worked:
Remember Merrick Garland? Civility has really been working for Democrats, hasn’t it!