ACLU-NM Responds to Supreme Court Decision on Trump Muslim Ban

ALBUQUERQUE, NM--Today, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico released a statement condemning today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Trump administration’s Muslim ban. The ban, a third iteration of a executive order barring entry to people living in several Muslim-majority nations, was challenged in court as unconstitutional by the national ACLU in 2016.

“This is a dark day for American jurisprudence,” said ACLU of New Mexico Legal Director Leon Howard. “The president, in issuing his executive order demonstrated a clear hostility toward Muslims. Banning people from our country because of how they pray and worship is abhorrent to any American who believes in our nation's foundational principles of liberty, justice, and human dignity. Now that the court has failed us, we the people have a moral responsibility to fight against religious bigotry in the streets and at the ballot box.”

Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, had this reaction to today’s decision:

“This ruling will go down in history as one of the Supreme Court’s great failures. It repeats the mistakes of the Korematsu decision upholding Japanese-American imprisonment and swallows wholesale government lawyers’ flimsy national security excuse for the ban instead of taking seriously the president’s own explanation for his action.

“It is ultimately the people of this country who will determine its character and future. The court failed today, and so the public is needed more than ever. We must make it crystal clear to our elected representatives: If you are not taking actions to rescind and dismantle Trump’s Muslim ban, you are not upholding this country’s most basic principles of freedom and equality.”

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