Supreme Court upholds Trump's Travel Restrictions

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host
The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled on President Donald Trump's travel restrictions executive order.  They ruled in support of his executive action, considering it constitutional.  If the members of the United States Supreme Court were interested in ruling based on the U.S. Constitution, the final tally would have been 9-0 rather than 5-4.  The problem is, the vote went down ideological lines.  The justices we are told who are conservative voted in favor of Trump's order, and the justices we are told who are liberal voted against Trump's order.

While I am not a fan of the court system interpreting as we saw in this case, in truth there is no constitutional authority for the courts to strike down or hold up an executive order, it was a necessary evil to get the liberal left off of our President's back as he works to do his job.

The duty of the President, according to Article II of the U.S. Constitution is to "execute the laws of the United States." Among the laws he was carrying out with his travel restrictions executive order was 8 U.S Code § 1182 under
(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President ...

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate...regardless of what group these persons may belong to.

The travel restrictions executive order, however, does not only target Muslims, as Trump's been accused.  If that was the case, all 57 Muslim countries in the world would be on that list, Chad would not have been removed from the list after they took actions to work with our government, and North Korea would not have been placed on the list.

That said, even if President Trump did want to target only Muslims, he legally could.  The Constitution does not indicate that there shall be no religious tests when it comes to immigration enforcement.  If a law has this provision, the Republican Congress may write law to change that.

The only place the term "religious test" appears in the U.S. Constitution is in Article VI., where it disallows religious tests regarding holding a political office. While Trump has not violated the religious test clause in the Constitution, the Democrats did when they challenged Trump's judicial nominations due to their adherence to their Christian Faith.

In short, the Supreme Court got it right.  The travel restriction executive order is a case of the President doing his job, executing existing law that is on the books.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary