SCOTUS BACKS ASYLUM BAN | Sotomayor And RBG Dissent | The Religious Right On Supreme Court’s Doorstep
September 12, 2019
ANOTHER DOOR CLOSED
|Last night the Supreme Court decided to allow nationwide enforcement of the Trump administration’s asylum ban. The justices’ order temporarily undoes a lower court ruling that had blocked PRESIDENT TRUMP’S policy denying asylum to anyone who passes through another country without seeking asylum there first. The president tweeted, “BIG United States Supreme Court WIN for the Border on Asylum!”
HEEL TURN
|But not all of the justices were on board with allowing enforcement of the asylum ban. JUSTICES RUTH BADER GINSBURG and SONIA SOTOMAYOR both dissented from the Supreme Court order. “Once again the Executive Branch has issued a rule that seeks to upend longstanding practices regarding refugees who seek shelter from persecution,” Sotomayor wrote, joined by Ginsburg, later referring to “some of the most vulnerable people in the Western Hemisphere.” Sotomayor added: “Although this Nation has long kept its door open to refugees — and although the stakes for asylum seekers could not be higher — the Government implemented its rule without first providing the public notice and inviting the public input generally required.”
TOP-ED
|Linda Greenhouse with The New York Times discusses an upcoming religion case that the Supreme Court added to its docket earlier this year in June. She previews her own piece and writes, “In this column, I explore some of these cases and call attention to an unusual dialogue emerging between the court’s most conservative justices and the religious right that has good reason to suppose that its moment is finally at hand.”