Trump v Hawaii

Trump v Hawaii (2018) is the US Supreme Court decision that upheld President Trump’s Muslim travel ban. On July 26th 2018 the highest court in the land upheld it in a straight party vote, 5 to 4.

The currently banned. Via Politico.

The ban, in its current form, Trump’s third attempt, prevents anyone new from entering the US from five Muslim-majority countries – Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and Iran – along with North Korea and government officials (and their families) from Venezuela.

The ban will last as long as Trump wants. He can add other countries. All he has to do is use the magic words – national security – and the Supreme Court will not second guess him. Even if he makes it crystal clear in public comments that it has little to do with national security and everything to do with his Islamophobia – or whatever brand of fear and hatred he chooses to push.

This is just how the Supreme Court wound up backing President Roosevelt’s decision to send Japanese Americans to prison camps. In Korematsu v United States (1944) the government argued that it was necessary for national security. That turned out to be a lie, as the government’s own records would later prove, but the Supreme Court bought it.

Trump himself expected the Supreme Court to go along with his ban in just this way. He told “Good Morning America”:

“What I’m doing is no different than FDR [President Roosevelt] … one of the most highly respected presidents.”

Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg in their dissent also compared the case to Korematsu. But Justice Roberts, speaking for the Republican majority, distanced their decision from Korematsu by overturning it and calling it “morallly repugnant”.

The Republicans on the Supreme Court are not “economically distressed”. They are not “low-information”. They do not face re-election or have any reason to fear Trump’s tweets. They fit none of the it’s-not-about-racism excuses Whites make for Trump supporters. This is just who they are. Trump is now the new normal.

Justice Sotomayor in her dissent:

“The United States of America is a Nation built upon the promise of religious liberty. Our Founders honored that core promise by embedding the principle of religious neutrality in the First Amendment. The Court’s decision today fails to safeguard that fundamental principle. It leaves undisturbed a policy first advertised openly and unequivocally as a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” because the policy now masquerades behind a façade of national-security concerns. But this repackaging does little to cleanse Presidential Proclamation No. 9645 of the appearance of discrimination that the President’s words have created. Based on the evidence in the record, a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus. … The majority holds otherwise 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. Because that troubling result runs contrary to the Constitution and our precedent, I dissent.”

– Abagond, 2018.

See also:

• Donald Trump
  • Muslim ban
  • “It’s not about racism”
• Japanese American internment
  • Korematsu v United States
• Sonia Sotomayor
• Vine Deloria, Jr: Conquest Masquerading as Law – the Supreme Court and Indian treaties

538