(CNN) — The Supreme Court has upheld President Donald Trump’s travel ban. The ruling was 5-4 along partisan lines, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the conservative majority. The ruling sends a strong message that Trump has broad powers under immigration law to act to protect national security and that statements made during a campaign may not be legally determinative of the President’s intent. “The Proclamation is squarely within the scope of Presidential authority,” Roberts wrote. Trump immediately reacted on Twitter: SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRUMP TRAVEL BAN. Wow! The President then called the ruling “a tremendous victory for the American People and the Constitution” and said he felt vindicated. “This ruling is also a moment of profound vindication following months of hysterical commentary from the media and Democratic politicians who refuse to do what it takes to secure our border and our country,” Trump said. This is the third version of the travel ban. It was issued in September – after previous bans had ricocheted through the courts – and restricts entry from seven countries to varying degrees: Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Venezuela. Chad was originally on the list but it was recently removed after having met baseline security requirements. Challengers, including the state of Hawaii, argued that the travel ban exceeded the President’s authority under immigration law as well as the Constitution. They also used Trump’s statements during the campaign, when he called for a ban on travel from all Muslim-majority countries, but Roberts dismissed those concerns. “Plaintiffs argue that this President’s words strike at fundamental standards of respect and tolerance, in violation of our constitutional tradition,” Roberts wrote. “But the issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements. It is instead the significance of those statements in reviewing a Presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility. In doing so, we must consider not only the statements of a particular President, but also the authority of the Presidency itself.” Stephen Vladeck, CNN’s Supreme Court analyst and a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, called the ruling a “big win” for the White House. “The Supreme Court has reaffirmed the President’s sweeping statutory authority when it comes to deciding who may and who may not travel to the United States, authority that both President Trump and future presidents will surely rely upon to justify more aggressive immigration restrictions,” Vladeck said. However, Vladeck noted that this was the third version of the travel ban and the administration made significant changes in response to lower-court rulings invalidating the first two iterations, including one issued one week after Trump became president in January 2017. The Supreme Court will wrap up its term Wednesday. Sotomayor dissent and Korematsu Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a blistering dissent, said the court was wrong to ignore Trump’s various comments. “The majority here completely sets aside the President’s charged statements about Muslims as irrelevant,” she wrote. “That holding erodes the foundational principles of religious tolerance that the court elsewhere has so emphatically protected, and it tells members of minority religions in our country ‘that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community.’” She also compared the opinion to one that came down in 1944 in which the court blessed the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Reacting to the dissent, Roberts took the unusual step to declare that the 1944 case, Korematsu v. United States, was no longer good law and was wrongly decided. It is the first time the Supreme Court has ever made this public determination. Liberal lawmakers, groups denounce ruling Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, said Tuesday’s decision “give legitimacy to discrimination and Islamophobia.” Neal Katyal, one of the lead attorneys for Hawaii in the case said although he was “disappointed” in the court’s decision, he argued that the process gives him hope and called on Congress to reverse the President’s travel ban. “While we continue to believe that this third version fails that test, there is no question that by striking down the first two travel bans, the judiciary forced a recalcitrant administration to at least give its order the veil of constitutionality,” Katyal said in a statement Tuesday. “We continue to believe, as do four dissenting justices, that the travel ban is unconstitutional, unprecedented, unnecessary and un-American.” The American Civil Liberties Union also strongly condemned the court’s ruling, writing on Twitter that “this is not the first time the Court has been wrong, or has allowed official racism and xenophobia to continue rather than standing up to it.” Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement that the court’s “ruling will go down in history as one of the Supreme Court’s great failures.” Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez said, “Discrimination is not a national security strategy, and prejudice is not patriotism. Let’s call this ban for what it is: an outright attack on the Muslim community that violates our nation’s commitment to liberty and justice for all.” Congressional Republicans applauded the court’s decision, arguing that it was a win for national security and dismissing the accusations that it is a ban on Muslims entering the United States. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he was “pleased.” “As I stated when the new Executive Order was issued, it is not a religious ban,” Graham said on Twitter. “The order was focused on countries that are in true states of disarray and would have great difficulty vetting to ensure terrorists are not coming into the United States.” This story is breaking and will be updated.<doc-sep>The 5-to-4 decision upholding President Trump’s travel ban basically did two things. The majority said that the president had been given vast authority over immigration and national security by Congress and that he acted consistent with that authority. The second thing it did was reject the claim that the travel ban was infected by religious discrimination. “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” The majority discounted the president’s statements and said the role of the courts was to look at the face of the presidential proclamation issued in September, and that proclamation, the court said, was lawful. The Supreme Court has occasionally looked at the scope of presidential power, and it’s gone both ways. It imposed some limits on President George W. Bush’s ability to hold people in Guantánamo Bay. It rejected President Truman’s attempt to seize the steel industry during the Korean War. And it forced President Nixon to turn over tapes concerning the Watergate scandal that led to his departure from office. The crux of the argument against the travel ban was based on President Trump’s tweets and statements on the campaign trail and in office, in which he suggested that he was singling out Muslims for discriminatory treatment. In the lower courts and now at the Supreme Court, there was a strong partisan divide, with every Republican appointee voting to sustain the travel ban and every Democratic appointee in dissent. The majority opinion gave rise to a very striking dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who spoke at length in the Supreme Court courtroom about the terrible precedent the majority set and how it resonated with some of the darkest periods in American history, notably the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. The decision was a major statement on presidential power in the area of immigration and national security, but it didn’t break new ground. The ruling had no particular practical impact because months ago, the Supreme Court allowed the travel ban to go into effect while it considered the case. What it did instead was decline to impose special legal rules on an idiosyncratic president who speaks in ways that are unfamiliar to American traditions and to say that it was considering the presidency and not President Trump in ruling on his travel ban.<doc-sep>Many legal experts have spotted a clear tension between this week’s close 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding President Trump’s travel ban, and the court’s very recent 7-2 ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The cases raised similar issues, yet the justices went in opposite directions. Both decisions involved seemingly neutral government policies that were challenged in part because of evidence showing the true purpose behind them was discrimination on the basis of religion. In Masterpiece Cakeshop, the court ruled in favor of Jack Phillips, a baker who refused to prepare a cake for a same-sex wedding, because he opposes such marriages on religious grounds. He prevailed because the justices found that some members of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which had adjudicated his claim, expressed bias against Phillips’ religious beliefs. Donald Trump, meanwhile, famously called for a “Muslim ban” on the campaign trail — then instituted a travel ban that targeted Muslim-majority nations. Yet the court upheld the travel ban, and the majority concluded that Trump’s statements should not determine the outcome of the case. All five justices who voted to uphold the travel ban were also in the majority in Masterpiece Cakeshop. This contradiction can’t be justified. The main rationalization for it — that immigration policy is largely exempt from normal judicial scrutiny — is badly flawed. Immigration and national security policy should not be exempt from the usual constraints of the Bill of Rights. Other possible justifications for the discrepancy also fall flat. There was much stronger evidence of bias in the travel ban case than in Masterpiece Jack Phillips prevailed, according to the majority in Masterpiece Cakeshop, because the Colorado Civil Rights Commission showed “elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs that motivated his objection.” It was the words of the commission members that did them in. One member said it was “despicable” for the baker to use “freedom of religion ... to justify discrimination.” Another compared the baker’s views to the use of religion to justify slavery and the Holocaust. The comparison between refusal to bake a cake and the Holocaust was indeed absurd, and it is reasonable to see that statement as evidence of not just foolishness but bias. But as Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in her dissent in the travel ban case, the evidence of discriminatory motivation on Trump’s part is far stronger. The travel ban proclamation followed numerous statements by President Trump explicitly advocating a “Muslim ban” (dating back to a December 2015 policy proposal calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”). When Trump eventually switched to a “territorial” policy focused on Muslim-majority nations, he repeated equated that new policy with the earlier “Muslim ban” proposal. He even described the latter as an “expansion” of the former. What’s more, the discriminatory motivations expressed in Trump’s statements played a far bigger role in the travel ban policy than the two commisioners’ biases did in the original adjudication of Masterpiece Cakeshop. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out in her Masterpiece Cakeshop dissent, the two officials who expressed prejudice against Phillips did not by themselves determine the outcome. The case was first considered by the Colorado Civil Rights Division (which found “probable cause” for a violation of state antidiscrimination law), then assessed by the Civil Rights Commission, then heard by an administrative law judge, and finally reviewed by the Colorado Court of Appeals. Only two of seven members of the Civil Rights Commission expressed hostility towards the baker’s beliefs religious beliefs; there was no indication of hostility on the part of the other three bodies that considered the case. By contrast, where the travel ban is concerned, there was only one ultimate decision-maker: Trump. His motives are the ones that matter. Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion for the court in Trump v. Hawaii endorses the administration’s claim that the travel ban was not based on Trump’s incendiary remarks on the campaign trail but rather rooted in a “worldwide review process undertaken by multiple Cabinet officials.” But that supposedly thorough review produced a cursory report only 17 pages long. And the resulting proclamation does not even consistently apply the criteria supposedly used to decide which countries effectively share information used to preventing terrorism. Longstanding Supreme Court precedent holds that a seemingly neutral government policy can be invalidated if there is evidence that its true purpose was discrimination on the basis of prohibited classifications, such as race, ethnicity, or religion. But the government can potentially still prevail if it proves that the policy would likely have been enacted for legitimate reasons even in the absence of illicit motivations. By that standard, too, the case for upholding the Colorado ruling in the cake-shop case is stronger than that for upholding the travel ban. The official security justification for the travel ban policy is laughably weak. In the 40-year period for which there is data, no one has ever been killed in a terrorist attack in the US by an entrant from any of the nations covered by travel ban. Combined with Trump’s statements and the highly dubious “review process, this strongly suggests that the official rationale for the policy was a pretext. By contrast, there was a plausible rationale for Colorado’s decision: preventing discrimination against same-sex couples, whether or not such discrimination had religious motivations. All efforts to distinguish the two cases fall short In upholding the travel ban, the Supreme Court majority ruled that the policy was subject only to the most minimal “rational basis” review because it involves immigration policy, and immigration policy is relevant to national security. That policy realm, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, involves issues where the executive has specialized expertise that judges lack. But there is no good reason to exempt immigration or security policy from normal judicial scrutiny for potential violations of the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, was intended to limit government power generally; it wasn’t framed as applying to only specific categories of policies, or to certain categories of people.<doc-sep>U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg participates in an annual Women's History Month reception hosted by Pelosi in the U.S. capitol building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. This year's event honored the women Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court: Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, celebrating her 20th anniversary on the bench, is photographed in the West conference room at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Friday, August 30, 2013. (Photo by Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post via Getty Images) WASHINGTON - JUNE 25: The exterior view of the U.S. Supreme Court is seen June 25, 2007 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court has ruled to give more freedom for interest groups and unions to run TV ads before elections, and also ruled to limit taxpayers' rights to challenge government initiatives as unconstitutionally promoting religion. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy testifies before the House Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on Capitol Hill March 8, 2007 in Washington, DC. Kennedy and Justice Clarence Thomas spoke about concerns with the ongoing remodeling of the court building, the reduction of paperwork due to electronic media and the disparity of pay between federal judges and lawyers working in the private sector. WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 12: Members of the Supreme Court, (L-R) Chief Justice John Roberts and associate justices Anthony Kennendy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, applaud as U.S. President Barack Obama arrives to deliver his State of the Union speech before a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol February 12, 2013 in Washington, DC. Facing a divided Congress, Obama focused his speech on new initiatives designed to stimulate the U.S. economy and said, 'It?s not a bigger government we need, but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth'. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2017, file photo, the Supreme Court in Washington is seen at sunset. The Supreme Court is ordering Washington courts to take a new look at the case of a florist who refused to provide services for the wedding of two men because of her religious objection to same-sex marriage. The justices' order Monday means the court is passing for now on the chance to decide whether business owners can refuse on religious grounds to comply with anti-discrimination laws that protect LGBT people. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) Justices of the US Supreme Court sit for their official group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 1, 2017. Seated (L-R): Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Anthony M. Kennedy, Chief Justice of the US John G. Roberts, Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer. Standing (L-R): Associate Justices Elena Kagan, Samuel Alito Jr., Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch. / AFP PHOTO / SAUL LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 23: People wait in line to enter the U.S. Supreme Court, on April 23, 2018 in Washington, DC. Today the high court is hearing arguments in Chavez-Mesa v. US, which concerns a technical matter regarding sentencing guidelines. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will be representing the government. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) People gather outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments in the U.S. v. Micosoft case February 27, 2018 in Washington, DC. Front row from left, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, and Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, back row from left, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Associate Justice Samuel Alito Jr., Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch pose for a group portrait in the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court June 1, 2017 in Washington, DC. WASHINGTON - MARCH 08: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy testifies before the House Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on Capitol Hill March 8, 2007 in Washington, DC. Thomas and fellow Justice Clarence Thomas spoke about concerns with the ongoing remodeling of the court building, the reduction of paperwork due to electronic media and the disparity of pay between federal judges and lawyers working in the private sector. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) Editor’s Note: Vikram David Amar is the dean and the Iwan Foundation Professor of Law at the University of Illinois College of Law in Urbana-Champaign, and Akhil Reed Amar is Sterling Professor of Law at the Yale Law School. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the authors. (CNN) — In one of this year’s most-watched cases, Trump v. Hawaii, Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday authored a five-justice opinion upholding the latest version of the Trump administration’s so-called travel ban. While Roberts is the court’s formal leader, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy is often its fulcrum – the proverbial swing justice – and its conscience. In the Hawaii case, Kennedy penned a brief and high-minded concurrence, epitomizing his approach to being a good judge and a good leader. By joining Roberts’ opinion, Kennedy kept his eye on the ball: the executive order itself, which regulates entry into the United States by nationals of several Middle Eastern and African countries, rather than the President’s various inflammatory tweets about Muslims. (More on that later.) As important as his swing vote was, Kennedy’s words in concurrence are also noteworthy. In classic Kennedy fashion, he called for civility and mutual respect in an increasingly polarized country and world. Kennedy begins his concurrence by trying to identify “common ground” between all the justices in this case: everyone on the court abhors religious and other invidious discrimination. Finding common ground in contentious cases is what Kennedy has tried to do for decades. Sometimes, he votes with the liberals, other times the conservatives. When he is on the losing side of a case, he registers his disagreement by “respectfully dissenting,” whereas many other justices in hot-button cases more curtly “dissent.” He never insults the positions advanced by other members of his court, the lower courts, or the lawyers appearing before him.<doc-sep>
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 01: U.S. President Donald Trump announces his decision for the United States to pull out of the Paris climate agreement in the Rose Garden at the White House June 1, 2017 in Washington, DC. Trump pledged on the campaign trail to withdraw from the accord, which former President Barack Obama and the leaders of 194 other countries signed in 2015. The agreement is intended to encourage the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to limit global warming to a manageable level. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) CHICAGO - SEPTEMBER 25: Travelers with their baggage are seen in a check-in line September 25, 2006 at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois. The TSA announced today they have slightly relaxed the ban on carrying some liquids onto passenger flights to allow most toiletries and beverages bought after the security checkpoints. (Photo by Tim Boyle/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 23: People wait in line to enter the U.S. Supreme Court, on April 23, 2018 in Washington, DC. Today the high court is hearing arguments in Chavez-Mesa v. US, which concerns a technical matter regarding sentencing guidelines. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will be representing the government. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) WASHINGTON - MARCH 08: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy testifies before the House Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on Capitol Hill March 8, 2007 in Washington, DC. Thomas and fellow Justice Clarence Thomas spoke about concerns with the ongoing remodeling of the court building, the reduction of paperwork due to electronic media and the disparity of pay between federal judges and lawyers working in the private sector. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (CNN) — In its most consequential decision of the term, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld President Donald Trump’s so-called “travel ban” – arguing that the chief executive has the power to limit entrance into the US from seven countries. It is a massive win for Trump, who had watched as his attempts to put travel bans in place were repeatedly blocked by lower courts – arguing that to do so exceeded his power and that his emphasis during the campaign on making this a “Muslim ban” violated the Constitution. “Wow,” was all the usually voluble Trump offered up – via Twitter – in the immediate aftermath of the ruling. Having skimmed the actual ruling – and having closely followed the politics of the travel ban for more than a year – here are my five takeaways. 1. Elections matter. A lot. The vote to uphold the travel ban was 5-4 – along party lines. If Hillary Clinton beats Donald Trump on November 8, 2016, there’s no way that the vacancy caused by the death of Antonin Scalia is filled by Neil Gorsuch. It’s almost certainly filled instead by someone more likely to side with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor rather than Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. And while it’s impossible to believe a Clinton White House would have proposed a travel ban anything close to what Trump did, even if she did, the court would be far more likely to vote it down – not uphold it. The truth is, Republicans may not yet be done reaping the judicial consequences of Trump’s 2016 victory. Rumors are rampant that Justice Anthony Kennedy may well retire at the end of this term, which comes to a close this week. While Kennedy voted in favor of upholding the travel ban – and was appointed to the court by Ronald Reagan – he is seen as a not-always-reliable conservative vote. His retirement would afford Trump an opportunity to appoint someone along the lines of Gorsuch and, in so doing, impact the ideological makeup of the court for decades to come. 2. This is as much Mitch McConnell’s victory as it is Donald Trump’s Trump will view the travel ban decision as a validation that he was, from the start, right all along about his ability to limit who comes into the country. (Worth noting: The court upheld the third iteration of the travel ban after the first two were thrown out due to problems with the way they were written.) And there’s no question this is a win for Trump. He campaigned on the idea that the President needed to make the tough call of keeping people from certain countries out – or, at least, upping the threshold to allow them into the United States – in order to keep Americans safe.