There is religious bigotry behind Trump's travel ban - Thomas Berg - America

University of St. Thomas (MN) law professor Thomas Berg supported the religious liberty claims in Masterpiece Bakeshop and Trump v. Hawaii.  He has a new essay in America - The Jesuit Review. - gwc

There is religious bigotry behind Trump's travel ban -  Thomas Berg - America

The Supreme Court, on the day before Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement, upheld President Trump’s ban on travel to the United States from seven countries, five of them overwhelmingly Muslim. In Trump v. Hawaii, the court majority refused to consider the president’s statements of anti-Muslim hostility that led up to the ban—as a presidential candidate, he had said “I think Islam hates us” and called for “a total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the country.

But earlier this month, the court decided in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case that a civil rights commission’s order that a baker serve same-sex weddings was invalidated by the statements of two commissioners displaying hostility toward the baker’s religious belief in traditional marriage.

It is unfair to accuse the court majority of hypocrisy in these two cases, as some have done. But the majority did miss an important opportunity to give teeth to one of the nation’s most basic constitutional principles: the prohibition on official religious bigotry. I filed or joined briefs in support of the religious liberty claims in both cases, regarding the travel ban and the cakeshop, and wish the court had protected both.

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