Trump's Muslim ban has suffered a few setbacks, but possibly none so severe as the one delivered today by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld a lower court ruling to block key parts of the ban from being enacted.
In their ruling, the Court was clear: This ban is based on animus and hatred toward Muslims, despite being wrapped in the cellophane of national security concerns.
The question for this Court, distilled to its essential form, is whether the Constitution, as the Supreme Court declared in Ex parte Milligan...remains “a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace.” And if so, whether it protects Plaintiffs’ right to challenge an Executive Order that in text speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination. Surely the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment yet stands as an untiring sentinel for the protection of one of our most cherished founding principles—that government shall not establish any religious orthodoxy, or favor or disfavor one religion over another. Congress granted the President broad power to deny entry to aliens, but that power is not absolute. It cannot go unchecked when, as here, the President wields it through an executive edict that stands to cause irreparable harm to individuals across this nation.
There is nowhere left to go but the United States Supreme Court, and the breadcrumb trail of rulings leading there suggest that Trump may not get the result he hopes for.
