Justice Sotomayor\u2019s scorching dissent skewered the court\u2019s decision to uphold the ban, which she condemned as \u201charrowing\u201d and \u201cmotivated by hostility and animus toward the Muslim faith.\u201d<\/b>
\nWASHINGTON \u2014 Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., reading for the majority on Tuesday morning, spoke clinically. Justice Stephen G. Breyer followed, working his way through his dissent mildly and analytically.
Then it was Justice Sonia Sotomayor\u2019s turn.
Steely and unwavering, she began: \u201cThe United States of America is a nation built upon the promise of religious liberty. Our founders honored that core promise by embedding the principle of religious neutrality in the First Amendment.\u201d
The crowded courthouse fell silent.
In upholding President Trump\u2019s ban on travel from several mostly Muslim countries, Justice Sotomayor continued, the Supreme Court had failed to \u201csafeguard that fundamental principle.\u201d
For the next 20 minutes, Justice Sotomayor remained resolute as she delivered an extraordinarily scorching dissent, skewering the court\u2019s decision and condemning the ban as \u201charrowing\u201d and \u201cmotivated by hostility and animus toward the Muslim faith.\u201d
The remarkable dissent was delivered by a woman who has championed her own upbringing as an example of the American dream. Justice Sotomayor, whose parents moved from Puerto Rico during World War II, was raised in a housing project in the Bronx. Her father did not speak English and her first language was Spanish. But determined to become a judge, she would go on to attend Princeton University and become the Supreme Court\u2019s first Latina justice.
Justice Sotomayor once said that \u201cpersonal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.\u201d She again drew upon that idea in her dissent on Tuesday, in which she accused the majority of \u201cignoring the facts, misconstruing our legal precedent, and turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering the proclamation inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens.\u201d
That was the crux of the Justice Sotomayor\u2019s damning conclusion: The president\u2019s ban is \u201cinexplicable by anything but animus,\u201d and to argue anything else is to divorce oneself from the facts.
The court voted 5-to-4, with the more conservative justices in the majority and with Justice Breyer writing his own dissent. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Justice Sotomayor\u2019s.
Justice Sotomayor chose her words carefully and sharply, at one point charging that Mr. Trump\u2019s policy \u201cnow masquerades behind a facade of national security concerns.\u201d
But one of her most striking decisions was to repeat the words of the president himself. Citing over a dozen instances in which Mr. Trump tweeted or issued anti-Muslim sentiments, it was his words, not her own, that rang out from the bench.
She continued down the list for minutes, reading one example after another.
\u201cOn Dec. 21,2016, President-elect Trump was asked whether he would \u2018rethink\u2019 his previous \u2018plans to create a Muslim registry or ban Muslim immigration,\u2019\u201d Justice Sotomayor said. \u201cHe replied: \u2018You know my plans. All along, I\u2019ve proven to be right.\u2019\u201d
\u201c\u2018People, the lawyers, and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN!\u2019\u201d she read, recounting the president\u2019s 2017 tweet .
\u201cIslam hates us,\u201d she read, citing another example, and added another: \u201cWe\u2019re having problems with Muslims coming into the country.\u201d
The conservative justices, staring unblinkingly ahead, remained stone-faced.
She continued that Mr. Trump had never disavowed any of his statements regarding Islam, and thus had failed \u201cto correct the reasonable perception of his apparent hostility toward the Islamic faith.\u201d
In another powerful passage, Justice Sotomayor drew parallels between the decision and Korematsu v. United States, the 1944 ruling that upheld the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II. (Chief Justice Roberts disputed the comparison in the majority decision, writing that Korematsu had \u201cnothing to do with this case.\u201d)
\u201cAs here, the government invoked an ill-defined national security threat to justify an exclusionary policy of sweeping proportion,\u201d she said. \u201cAs here, the exclusion was rooted in dangerous stereotypes about, inter alia, a particular group\u2019s supposed inability to assimilate and desire to harm the United States.\u201d
Justice Sotomayor continued that \u201cour nation has done much to leave its sordid legacy behind\u201d in the years since Korematsu. But, she reasoned, \u201cit does not make the majority\u2019s decision here acceptable or right.\u201d
\u201cBy blindly accepting the government\u2019s misguided invitation to sanction a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity toward a disfavored group, all in the name of a superficial claim of national security,\u201d she said, \u201cthe court redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu and merely replaces one \u2018gravely wrong\u2019 decision with another.\u201d<\/p>\n

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