In a 5-4 decision this week, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed an injunction that had – until December 2017 – prevented the Trump administration from using the Muslim ban 3.0 as a basis for denying visas to foreign nationals from eight affected countries. Although the court acknowledged that President Trump and his advisers had made a number of anti-Muslim statements and comments, they concluded to uphold the decision.

In powerful dissenting opinions by Justice Sotomayor and Justice Ginsburg, they argued that “Ultimately, what began as a policy explicitly ‘calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States’ has since morphed into a ‘Proclamation’ putatively based on national-security concerns,” the justices wrote. “But this new window dressing cannot conceal an unassailable fact: 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.” Justice Sotomayor highlighted how her colleagues “ignored the facts” and that “a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was motivated by anti-Muslim animus.”

Read more here