SCOTUS Upholds 'Travel Ban'

Here’s our @NRO editorial on the ‘travel ban’ decision: https://t.co/6650UE1GJH

— Andrew C. McCarthy (@AndrewCMcCarthy) June 27, 2018

Andrew McCarthy writes:

Under long-standing precedent, the judiciary may not second-guess the denial of a visa, even if an American citizen claims derivative harm from it, if the executive branch offers a “facially legitimate and bona fide” reason. This, coupled with the manifest care taken by the administration to tailor the travel restrictions narrowly, should have been cause for the courts to stay their hand. The lower courts did not do so, however, because of Donald Trump’s purple prose on the hustings and in the early days of his presidency, in which sensible concerns about border security and jihadist terrorism were framed in terms that could be construed as anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim. Clearly, as the barely controlled rage of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent attests, that is why what should have been an easy decision turned into a 5–4 cliffhanger.

As the majority correctly countered, though, the judiciary’s role in a democratic society is not to police political bombast or substitute its judgment for that of the voters and the political branches. There is no special jurisprudence of Trump, no judicially legislated exemption that denies this duly elected president the legitimate constitutional and statutory powers of his office. Federal judges do not have to like the president, but their allegiance is supposed to be to the law, not to the Resistance.

It is disturbing that four justices pledged their allegiance to the Resistance rather than the law.

Moreover, the facially neutral proclamation refutes the claims of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bias. The travel restrictions are not limited to Muslim-majority countries; they do not cover the vast majority or the world’s Muslims; the Muslim-majority countries that are cited were previously designated as problematic by Congress and prior administrations; and, as already noted, Muslim-majority countries have been removed from the list once the Trump administration judged them to have improved their compliance. Further, as the majority found, Congress did not intend, by barring discrimination based on nationality in the issuance of visas, to restrain the president’s power to limit the universe of admissible aliens. This claim is rebutted by both historical practice and common sense — as the Court explained, it would absurdly prevent the president from suspending entry from countries suffering epidemics, sponsoring terrorists, or on the brink of war with the United States.

If Trump's intent was to ban Muslims from entering our country, he failed miserably. The travel restrictions "do not cover the vast majority or the world’s Muslims."

Moreover, the countries with the world's largest Muslim populations, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India, aren't included in the travel restrictions.

Let's be honest. Trump's "travel ban" is not a ban on Muslims.

Hate for Trump is not justification for the abandonment of the law.