Judge Blocks Ban: "Human Decency" Over Trump's "Disgraceful" Discrimination

Citing the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which forbids unequal treatment based on religion, a federal judge in Hawaii on Wednesday evening issued a firm rebuke to President Trump by issuing a nationwide temporary injunction against the administration’s second attempt at instituting a travel and immigration ban aimed at people from six Muslim majority countries.

“The Constitution has again put the brakes on President Trump’s disgraceful and discriminatory ban. We are pleased but not surprised by this latest development and will continue working to ensure the Muslim ban never takes effect.” —Omar Jadwat, ACLUThe ruling by U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson came just hours before the executive order signed by Trump was slated to go into effect (see below). Watson cited the harm the ban would inflict on the state and those directly impacted as reason to issue the sweeping injunction and said government lawyers defending the White House had failed to make their case that the executive order was not discriminatory.

“The illogic of the government’s contentions is palpable,” Watson wrote in his decision. “The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed.”

Watson explained that the travel ban proposed by Trump violates constitutional protections because “a reasonable, objective observer—enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequences of events leading to its issuance—would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion”—specifically Islam.

Read the full order issued by the court here.

Cecilia Wang, deputy legal director for the ACLU, celebrated the ruling:

Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, joined his colleague in welcoming the news.

“The Constitution has again put the brakes on President Trump’s disgraceful and discriminatory ban,” Jadwat declared in a statement. “We are pleased but not surprised by this latest development and will continue working to ensure the Muslim ban never takes effect.”

Nihad Awad, director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), expressed gratitude and called for the president to give up his flawed policy.

“We welcome this order as confirmation of the strength of our nation’s system of checks and balances that prevents one branch of government from violating the Constitution or the rights of any vulnerable group,” said Awad.  “We urge the Trump administration to scrap this Muslim ban entirely because it disrespects both the Constitution and America’s longstanding tradition of religious freedom and inclusion.”

Meanwhile, Trump himself addressed a rally of supporters in Nashville, Tennessee just after the news of Watson’s ruling broke. As the Huffington Post reports: