Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that President Trump had provided sufficient evidence of national security concerns. In a dissent, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor called those concerns a "facade" for Islamophobia.
Image: Getty Images/D. Angerer
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The US Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Tuesday to allow President Donald Trump to keep his travel ban against people from several mostly Muslim countries. The conservative majority on the court agreed that the "Muslim ban," as it has been called, does not violate US immigration law.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court's opinion that the president had "set forth a sufficient national security justification" to stop many people from traveling to the US from Somalia, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Chad, North Korea and Venezuela. He added, however, that the court had "no view on the soundness of the policy."
The decision marks what can be seen as the first major policy victory for Trump since taking office in January 2017. In a statement, Trump called the ruling a "profound vindication," and a "tremendous victory for the American people."
Travel ban 'hurts US citizens'
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the ruling "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 facade of national-security concerns."
She added that any "reasonable observer would conclude that the proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus." She also accused her five colleagues who voted to uphold the ban of "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."
Trump travel ban: A timeline
President Donald Trump's attempts to curb immigration from eight countries, six of them majority Muslim, went through three iterations and numerous legal challenges. DW looks at the history of the controversial laws.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/V. Salemi
Travel ban 1.0
As one of his first acts in office, President Donald Trump signed executive order 13769 on January 27, 2017. Referred to as the "Muslim ban," it barred entry into the US for most people from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen for 90 days. It also halted entry for refugees from the Syrian conflict indefinitely, and placed a 120-day moratorium on refugees entering from all other nations.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/V. Salemi
Immediate protest
By the thousands, people flocked to major US international airports, including JFK in New York and LAX in Los Angeles to protest what they saw as open Islamophobia. International leaders, US diplomats, Catholic bishops, Jewish organizations, Nobel laureates and UN officials all decried the measure.
Image: Reuters/T. Soqui
Dozens of lawsuits
About 50 lawsuits against the ban were launched following its announcement. Just two days later, a judge in New York issued a temproary injunction. Then on February 9, 2017, a federal judge in the state of Washington issued a nationwide temporary restraining order against the rule. The government filed an appeal, but it was rejected by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Image: Getty Images/J. Sullivan
Travel ban 2.0
In response to legal challenges, on March 6, 2017, Trump signed what he called a "watered down, politically correct version" of his previous travel ban. The new ban allowed permanent residents of the US to travel back and forth to visit their families and permitted travel to those who had already been granted visas but had not yet arrived in the US, a group hit particularly hard by the first ban.
Image: Reuters/C. Barria
More legal challenges
On March 15, a federal judge in Hawaii issued a temporary restraining order against the new law, the same day a federal judge in Maryland came to a similar conclusion. In early June, the Trump administration filed an appeal. On June 26, US Supreme Court decided to partially lift injunctions against the ban as it waited to hear oral arguments against these injunctions in October 2017.
Image: Getty Images/M. Wilson
Third try
In September 2017, Trump responded to criticism that his travel bans purposely targeted only Muslims by removing Iraq and Sudan from the list and adding non-Muslim majority nations such as Venezuela and North Korea. Though it did add mostly-Muslim Chad. In December, the Supreme Court allowed the ban to stand until it made its final decision on the case.
Image: picture alliance/AP Images/A. F. Yuan
Ban stands
On June 26, 2018, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 (along conservative/liberal lines) to let the ban stand. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts made it clear that the court was not ruling on the "soundness" of the policy, but that the president had "set forth a sufficient national security justification." Protestors gathered on the court's steps comforted one another after the ruling.
Image: Reuters/L. Millis
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Trump's "Muslim ban" has gone through several iterations and been struck down by federal courts in Hawaii and Maryland before its final version emerged in September 2017, banning entry for most people from eight countries to the United States. Critics have highlighted that no one who has committed acts of terror in the United States has come from any of the Muslim-majority countries on the list.
Various NGOs and religious and aid organizations across the United States joined in a chorus of condemnation for the Supreme Court ruling.
Oxfam America was "dismayed," while the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center called it a "hateful and discriminatory Muslim ban."
The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on voters to counteract the ban by going to the polls for elections in November and voting for a "Congress that has a different mentality on immigration and civil rights."
Spokesman Wilfredo Ruiz added that Trump's "bigotry should have been as clear to the Supreme Court as it was to Muslims."
US Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim elected to Congress, compared the ruling to the Supreme Court decision that upheld Japanese internment camps during World War II, saying it "will someday serve as a marker of shame."
Ellison said that those opposed to bigotry must fight "for an America that recognizes that every human life has value and reflects our values of generosity and inclusion for all."
