RELEASE: Conservative Justices Abdicate Duty to Check President’s Unconstitutional Anti-Muslim Animus
WASHINGTON—On news this morning that the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Hawaii v. Trump, upholding President Donald Trump’s Muslim travel ban as lawful, Constitutional Accountability Center President Elizabeth Wydra issued the following reaction:
The Framers of America’s Constitution established the courts, in part, to be a check on the political branches of our government. To pull them back into line when they stray from founding principles and the letter of our laws and speak with the voice of the final authority on what our Constitution means.
Today, five conservative justices set this grave duty aside and instead gave license to the worst impulses of a president who has made no secret of his racial, ethnic, and religious prejudice against people who identify as Muslims. Rather than heed the words of James Madison, who said “the Religion … of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man,” today five conservative justices—some of whom have the chutzpah to call themselves originalists—instead chose to bury their heads in the sand rather than follow the clear import of the Constitution’s text and history. Chief Justice Roberts hears no evil, Justice Kennedy sees no evil, and Justice Gorsuch says no evil in the face of the president who appointed him, who as a candidate proudly and loudly called for “a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
Justice Sotomayor summed up today’s abdication of the court’s duty perfectly today, writing, “Our Constitution demands, and our country deserves, a Judiciary willing to hold the coordinate branches to account when they defy our most sacred legal commitments. [T]he Court’s decision today has failed in that respect.”
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Resources:
CAC’s brief on behalf of Members of Congress explaining by President Trump’s Muslim travel ban violates the Constitution and Immigration and Nationality Act: https://www.theusconstitution.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Trump_v_Hawaii_Cert_Amicus_Final.pdf
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Now in our tenth year, Constitutional Accountability Center is a think tank, public interest law firm, and action center dedicated to fulfilling the progressive promise of the Constitution’s text and history. Visit the new CAC website at www.theusconstitution.org.
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