Supreme Court upholds Trump travel ban from several Muslim-majority countries

Dissenting justices say decision ‘erodes the foundational principles of religious tolerance’

The US Supreme Court has upheld Donald Trump’s travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries, handing the president both a symbolic victory and a powerful affirmation of his powers to control immigration.

The 5-4 ruling, with the court’s five conservatives in the majority, ended – at least for now – a fierce fight in the courts over whether the policy represented an unlawful ban on Muslims entering the United States.

Mr Trump can now claim vindication after lower courts blocked a version of the travel ban announced in September, as well as two prior versions, in legal challenges brought by the state of Hawaii and others.

The president celebrated the news in a tweet, writing: “SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow!” In a meeting with Congress members later that day, he said the decision was “pretty much the final word” on the ban.

In a statement issued by the White House, Mr Trump called the decision “a profound vindication following months of hysterical commentary from the media and Democratic politicians”.

“The Supreme Court has upheld the clear authority of the president to defend the national security of the United States,” he added. “In this era of worldwide terrorism and extremist movements bent on harming innocent civilians, we must properly vet those coming into our country.”

In the court’s majority opinion issued on Tuesday, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the ban was “squarely within the scope of presidential authority” – sending a strong message about the scope of the president’s power to restrict immigration in the interest of national security.

Anastasia Tonello, the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the court’s decision gives Mr Trump a “wide latitude of discretion and authority on matters of national security – he only needs to come up with a justifiable reason he’s doing it”.

“There is really this broad discretion and deference given to the government to keep people out,” she told The Independent.

The decision was met with protests outside the Supreme Court, where participants carried signs reading “No Muslim ban” and “Refugees are welcome here”. The demonstrations were reminiscent of those that erupted after the first version of the ban took effect last January, when hundreds of people rallied to support travellers from banned nations who found themselves suddenly stranded at US airports, unable to leave.

Mr Trump issued the latest version of the ban by presidential proclamation in September, blocking travel from five of the countries in the original executive order: Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

The latest version removed restrictions on Sudanese visitors from the original, and added restrictions on travel from North Korea and Venezuela. Limitations on visitors from Iraq were lifted in a previous version, and stays on travel from Chad were removed by the White House in April.

The latest version of the ban was blocked by a federal judge last October, but the court lifted the stay in December pending its final decision.

The plaintiffs in the case – including the state of Hawaii and the International Refugee Assistance Project – had argued that the ban exceeded the powers granted to the president by both federal immigration law and the US constitution.

They also claimed that statements made by Mr Trump during his presidential campaign – including calls for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” – proved the ban was motivated by religious bias.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that ignoring these statements “erodes the foundational principles of religious tolerance that the court elsewhere has so emphatically protected”.

“It tells members of minority religions in our country that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community,” she added.

The court’s decision was decried by numerous politicians and advocacy groups as well. Democratic congressman Richard Neal claimed history would view the decision as one where the court “endorsed discrimination”.

Representative Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the US Congress, said the decision “gives legitimacy to discrimination and Islamophobia” and “undermines the core value of religious tolerance on which America was founded”.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed briefs in multiple cases against the ban, issued a scathing response on Twitter, writing: “This is not the first time the Court has been wrong, or has allowed official racism and xenophobia to continue rather than standing up to it.”

But Douglas Chin, the former Hawaii attorney general who led the state’s challenge to the travel ban last year, urged hope in the face of a decision he said brought him great pain.

“The path to civil rights does not always come quickly,” he said in a statement, “but I have faith in humanity and believe justice will eventually prevail.”