Liberal Jewish groups blast US Supreme Court for upholding travel ban

Jewish groups decry the US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Trump’s travel ban.

“Today’s decision will be recalled as a dark and shameful stain on America’s history reminiscent of other times when America turned against our highest ideals of equality, liberty, and justice,” the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt says. “The President’s Muslim Ban is plainly discriminatory, inhumane, and un-American and betrays the President’s oath to uphold the Constitution.

“We are profoundly disappointed and saddened that the Supreme Court allowed our country’s core values to be compromised in favor of religious discrimination and xenophobia,” he continues.

“Today’s decision sanctioning discrimination has harrowing echoes of when the United States discriminated against Chinese immigrants, when the Supreme Court allowed our nation to incarcerate more than 100,000 American citizens and others of Japanese descent in the 1940s under the Korematsu decision, and when the United States turned away Jews fleeing the Nazis aboard the SS St. Louis,” says Greenblatt.

“We stand with the Muslim community today and every day, and will never stop fighting for the values and ideals enshrined by our Constitution.”

HIAS, a group founded in 1881 to assist Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, also registers its disappointment over the decision.

“The Muslim Ban is not simply an exercise in executive authority, it’s the Trump Administration’s official license to discriminate on the basis of religion and nationality,” the group’s CEO Mark Hetfield says. “HIAS is disappointed in the Supreme Court’s affirmation of these policies of religious discrimination, fear, and tribalism, which have permeated nearly every aspect of America’s tradition of welcome.

“From the crackdown on people legally seeking asylum to the dramatic diminishment of the life-saving refugee resettlement program, the Trump Administration has been an unrelenting 17 month assault against America’s values as a nation welcoming of immigrants and refugees.”

Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, also weighs in:

Today, the Supreme Court shamefully endorsed a discriminatory travel ban, callously rejecting our nation’s founding principle of religious freedom. The ramifications of a ruling of this magnitude include prolonged family separation across oceans and exacerbated suffering of refugees and asylum seekers around the globe. With this decision, the Court is abandoning the United States’ cherished legacy as a nation of immigrants, a place of refuge, and a country that welcomes people of all faiths.

Bend the Arc: Jewish Action’s CEO Stosh Cotler says, “Our hearts are broken by today’s Supreme Court decision on the Muslim Ban, which we believe will be remembered in history alongside Dred Scott, Korematsu, and other cases where the highest court in the land failed to deliver justice.

“Scapegoating people of one religion, restricting their travel, separating families across international borders — the Jewish community has seen this before, and we must raise our voices now.

“We know that this policy of discrimination is part of this Administration’s larger effort to target Muslim people, surveil their communities, turn them away from our country, and deny them professional opportunities and access to their families. History will judge this ruling harshly.”