US top court upholds Trump’s travel ban

Bloomberg

A divided US Supreme Court upheld President Donald Trump’s travel ban, rejecting contentions that he targeted Muslims and giving him a legal and political victory on a controversy that helped define his presidency.
The 5-4 ruling ends a legal saga that dates to the beginning of the Trump presidency and helped establish his assertive, divisive leadership style. The decision bolsters the president’s already broad control over the nation’s borders.
Trump hailed the ruling as a “tremendous victory” during a White House meeting with senators. “The Supreme Court has upheld the clear authority of the president to defend the national security of the United States,” he said earlier.
“In this era of worldwide terrorism and extremist movements bent on harming innocent civilians, we must properly vet those coming into our country.”
A Hawaii-led group of challengers said the policy was the embodiment of Trump’s December 2015 campaign call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”. Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said those comments weren’t enough to strike down the policy.
“The issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements,” Roberts wrote. “It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility.”
The ruling was one of the last of the court’s nine-month term. It was expected to issue its final opinions on June 27.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented. Trump’s Supreme Court appointee, Neil Gorsuch, joined fellow conservatives Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito in the majority.
Writing for herself and Ginsburg, Sotomayor accused the majority 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.”
The ban in its current form affects seven countries, five of them predominantly Muslim, and indefinitely bars more than 150 million people from entering the country.