The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld President Trump’s Muslim ban, a discriminatory campaign promise that the Brennan Center has been fighting in court since the beginning. The ruling ignores overwhelming evidence of anti-Muslim bigotry driving the policy and its harmful impacts on communities both in the U.S. and abroad. The Brennan Center said today’s decision echoes the court’s greenlighting of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
“In failing to strike down this obviously bigoted policy, which has nothing to do with national security, the Supreme Court came down on the wrong side of history,” said Faiza Patel, co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty & National Security Program. “More importantly, it endorsed the immense harm already felt by American Muslims and their families. This decision is unconscionable. But we will continue to fight – against this Muslim ban, and against the administration’s other less visible but equally unjustified initiatives targeting Muslims, like extreme vetting.”
“Beyond the human suffering it will cause, this opinion reflects a dangerously expansive view of executive power—one that ignores clear signals of unconstitutional intent,” said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty & National Program. “The majority’s approach in practice allows the president’s powers over immigration to trump the bill of rights. It’s now up to us, as a people, to keep fighting to protect those rights.”
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, together with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Profeta & Eisenstein, filed an amicus brief on behalf of seven Muslim American residents and activists who documented the ban’s impact on the Muslim American community.
Read the report Extreme Vetting and the Muslim Ban, which documents the Trump administration’s host of misguided and Islamophobic immigrant vetting policies.
For more information or to schedule an interview, contact Naren Daniel at (646) 292–8381 or naren.daniel@nyu.edu.