Eight years ago, in the Supreme Court’s first significant battle over a Donald Trump policy, the justices dismissed the president’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and upheld a travel ban on majority-Muslim countries.
Now, Trump’s lawyers are invoking the decision as they urge the justices to ignore his derogatory comments about Haitians and endorse his plan to deport certain migrants previously granted “temporary protected status” in the US because of turmoil in their home country. The travel ban case allowed the president to defend the ban based on a “legitimate” national security interest, irrespective of whether it had been motivated by animus.
The decision launched the court’s pattern of bolstering Trump’s power. It was also the first major case in which the court’s conservatives adopted what has a become blinkered approach to the president’s biased assertions.
Before he ordered the ban, Trump had claimed, “Islam hates us,” and he vowed “a total and complete shutdown” of Muslim refugees.
“The issue before us today is not whether to denounce the statements,” Chief Justice John Roberts said as he read excerpts of his majority opinion from the bench on that dramatic June 2018 morning. “It is instead the significance of the statements in reviewing a presidential directive neutral on its face, addressing the matter within the core of presidential authority.”
Dissenting justices faulted the majority for “blindly accepting … a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity toward a disfavored group, all in the name of a superficial claim of national security.”
Perhaps the most significant Trump ruling to date, involving his immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts, relatedly touched on the president’s motives — and put them off-limits. That 2024 case arose from the Justice Department’s election-subversion charges against Trump. (The matter never went to trial, because the Supreme Court intervened.)
“In dividing official from unofficial conduct,” the Supreme Court majority said, “courts may not inquire into the President’s motives.” Dissenting justices complained, “Under that rule, any use of official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt purpose indicated by objective evidence of the most corrupt motives and intent, remains official and immune.”
A query from Justice Neil Gorsuch during oral arguments in the case underscored how some justices balanced Trump’s actions with regard for the office of the presidency.
“Do we look at motives, the president’s motives for his actions?” Gorsuch asked, adding, “I’m not concerned about this case so much as future ones too. … We’re writing a rule for the ages.”
The new dispute to be argued Wednesday puts Trump’s motivations — specifically related to alleged racial animus — clearly in sight.
He has specifically vilified Haitians over the years. Trump described Haiti as a “filthy … shithole” country during his first term and during the 2024 campaign, falsely asserted that Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs,” “eating the cats.”
Lawyers for the group of Haitians previously granted “temporary protected status” contend in arguments to the Supreme Court that such racial animus prompted the administration’s 2025 order to end their TPS designation.
That challenge is based on constitutional equal protection, but the Haitian TPS holders have also raised procedural arguments that could affect the fate of recipients from a swath of countries. The Haitian controversy will be heard Wednesday with a companion case brought by Syrian TPS holders.
Under the TPS law, the secretary of homeland security may provide temporary protection from removal to foreigners who cannot return to their home country because of armed conflict, natural disaster or other extraordinary conditions. The law imposes various procedural requirements on the decision to end the protected status.
Since returning to office, Trump has accelerated his anti-immigrant agenda and his administration has sought to terminate TPS coverage in more than a dozen countries, including Venezuela, Honduras, and Somalia, spurring numerous court challenges.
An estimated 350,000 Haitians living in America could be affected by the TPS revocation. The companion case at the Supreme Court involves an estimated 6,000 Syrian nationals living in the US.
Justice Department lawyers argue that the TPS terminations were based on national security and foreign policy interests. They refute the Haitian claim of racial bias by relying on the Trump v. Hawaii travel ban case, when the majority dismissed arguments that Trump’s anti-Muslim comments revealed unconstitutional religious bias.
“There, like here, the challengers invoked extrinsic campaign statements and in-office quotes from the President as proof that unconstitutional animus infected official action,” US Solicitor General John Sauer told the justices in a written brief.
Noting that Trump’s politically charged statements failed to influence the justices back in 2018, Sauer added, “The Court held that the (travel ban) proclamation passed constitutional muster … . There, as here, the Executive action was ‘facially neutral’ and involved ‘national security.’”
Lawyers for the Haitians argue that the current controversy differs significantly, involving people lawfully in the US right now, unlike the foreigners in Trump v. Hawaii who were outside the country seeking entry.
They also note that it was soon after his false claim during a 2024 presidential debate that Haitian TPS holders were “eating” residents’ pets that Trump vowed to revoke the TPS status and return Haitians to their home country.
The high court majority has mostly brushed away Trump’s reckless statements over the years. But his outbursts are now hitting close to home.
Since the Supreme Court’s February decision striking down his far-reaching tariffs on foreign goods, Trump has repeatedly denounced the justices. Last week as he continued that tirade, he targeted the one Black woman justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson. The newest justice was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022.
“The Democrat Justices stick together like glue, NEVER failing to wander from the warped and perverse policies, ideas, and cases put before them,” he wrote on Truth Social with hyperbole that turned racially offensive. “They ALWAYS vote as a group, or BLOCK, even that new, Low IQ person, that somehow found her way to the bench (Sleepy Joe!).”
Jackson declined to respond to a CNN request regarding the Trump remark.
Trump has increasingly mounted his attacks on judges at all levels of the federal court system. His insults against the justices have turned personal, as when he said in February that justices who voted in the majority in the tariff dispute were an “embarrassment to their families.” (The justices have declined to publicly respond to that comment.)
The 2018 case of Trump v. Hawaii traced to Trump’s first days in office in January 2017, when he began imposing a series of orders prohibiting the entry of nationals from certain majority-Muslim countries.
When the dispute arrived at the high court, with the third iteration of the travel-ban order, it was the most closely watched case of the annual session. Announcing the ruling from the bench on June 26, 2018, Roberts rejected arguments that Trump’s statements against Muslims revealed a religious bias that violated the First Amendment.
“The entry suspension at issue here,” Roberts said, “is an act that could have been taken by any other president.”
He was joined in full by the court’s four other conservatives at the time. The court has only moved more rightward since Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett succeeded liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020. (It is notable, however, that Barrett has first-hand experience with Haiti; two of her seven children were adopted from the country.)
Back in 2018, after Roberts announced the opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor read aloud excerpts of her dissenting opinion, which was joined fully by Ginsburg. She repeated some of Trump’s most controversial statements, including, “Islam hates us” and “We’re having problems with Muslims coming into this country.”
Trump had blamed “terrorist attacks on Muslims’ lack of assimilation and their commitment to Sharia law. … He opined that Muslims, ‘Do not respect us at all,’” Sotomayor added.
Sotomayor then looked up and told courtroom spectators: “Take a brief moment and let the gravity of those statements sink in. … Then remember that most of these words were spoken or written by the current president of the United States of America, the man who issued the three executive orders at the center of this case.”
