Muslim Ban Dissent Is A Part Of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Legacy
Anti-discrimination groups across the country are mourning the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who stood up for diverse civil rights, and women’s rights in particular, during her 27 years as a Supreme Court justice.
Ginsburg, who died Friday at age 87, was remembered over the weekend by a broad spectrum of politicians and left-leaning advocacy groups for her staunch defense of social justice issues while serving on the nation’s highest court since 1993. Among her opinions was a scathing 2018 dissent of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel to the U.S. from mostly Muslim-majority countries.
In opposing the 5-4 decision allowing the travel ban to continue, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ginsburg issued a brutal critique of the ruling and took it a step further, calling out Trump’s history of Islamophobia. They accused the justices voting in the majority of “turning a blind eye.”
Ginsburg and Sotomayor argued, in particular, that the ban should be viewed in the context of Trump’s 2016 campaign remarks, when he called for a “complete and total shutdown” of Muslims entering the U.S.
The travel ban was “motivated by anti-Muslim animus,” the women wrote, adding that “the words of the President and his advisers create the strong perception that the Proclamation is contaminated by impermissible discriminatory animus against Islam and its followers.”
So much of what I do as a civil rights advocate, an attorney, a woman, a Muslim, and as an American is possible because of what she accomplished. Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates
Advocates for American Muslims said the joint dissent and subsequent remarks were important messages amid the struggle against the ban. Trump signed his first executive order for a travel ban in 2017 to target citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen). The ban was...
