Tag Archives: U.S. Supreme Court

Trump slaps travel restrictions on North Korea, Venezuela in sweeping new ban

International passengers wait for their rides outside the international arrivals exit at Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, U.S. September 24, 2017.

By Jeff Mason and Phil Stewart

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Sunday slapped new travel restrictions on citizens from North Korea, Venezuela and Chad, expanding to eight the list of countries covered by his original travel bans that have been derided by critics and challenged in court.

Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia were left on the list of affected countries in a new proclamation issued by the president. Restrictions on citizens from Sudan were lifted.

The measures help fulfill a campaign promise Trump made to tighten U.S. immigration procedures and align with his “America First” foreign policy vision. Unlike the president’s original bans, which had time limits, this one is open-ended.

“Making America Safe is my number one priority. We will not admit those into our country we cannot safely vet,” the president said in a tweet shortly after the proclamation was released.

Iraqi citizens will not be subject to travel prohibitions but will face enhanced scrutiny or vetting.

The current ban, enacted in March, was set to expire on Sunday evening. The new restrictions are slated to take effect on Oct. 18 and resulted from a review after Trump’s original travel bans sparked international outrage and legal challenges.

The addition of North Korea and Venezuela broadens the restrictions from the original, mostly Muslim-majority list.

An administration official, briefing reporters on a conference call, acknowledged that the number of North Koreans now traveling to the United States was very low.

Rights group Amnesty International USA condemned the measures.

“Just because the original ban was especially outrageous does not mean we should stand for yet another version of government-sanctioned discrimination,” it said in a statement.

“It is senseless and cruel to ban whole nationalities of people who are often fleeing the very same violence that the U.S. government wishes to keep out. This must not be normalized.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement the addition of North Korea and Venezuela “doesn’t obfuscate the real fact that the administration’s order is still a Muslim ban.”

The White House portrayed the restrictions as consequences for countries that did not meet new requirements for vetting of immigrants and issuing of visas. Those requirements were shared in July with foreign governments, which had 50 days to make improvements if needed, the White House said.

A number of countries made improvements by enhancing the security of travel documents or the reporting of passports that were lost or stolen. Others did not, sparking the restrictions.

The announcement came as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments on Oct. 10 over the legality of Trump’s previous travel ban, including whether it discriminated against Muslims.

 

NORTH KOREA, VENEZUELA ADDED

Trump has threatened to “destroy” North Korea if it attacks the United States or its allies. Pyongyang earlier this month conducted its most powerful nuclear bomb test. The president has also directed harsh criticism at Venezuela, once hinting at

a potential military option to deal with Caracas.

But the officials described the addition of the two countries to Trump’s travel restrictions as the result of a purely objective review.

In the case of North Korea, where the suspension was sweeping and applied to both immigrants and non-immigrants, officials said it was hard for the United States to validate the identity of someone coming from North Korea or to find out if that person was a threat.

“North Korea, quite bluntly, does not cooperate whatsoever,” one official said.

The restrictions on Venezuela focused on Socialist government officials that the Trump administration blamed for the country’s slide into economic disarray, including officials from the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service and their immediate families.

Trump received a set of policy recommendations on Friday from acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke and was briefed on the matter by other administration officials, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a White House aide said.

The rollout on Sunday was decidedly more organized than Trump’s first stab at a travel ban, which was unveiled with little warning and sparked protests at airports worldwide.

Earlier on Sunday, Trump told reporters about the ban: “The tougher, the better.”

Rather than a total ban on entry to the United States, the proposed restrictions differ by nation, based on cooperation with American security mandates, the threat the United States believes each country presents and other variables, officials said.

Somalis, for example, are barred from entering the United States as immigrants and subjected to greater screening for visits.

After the Sept. 15 bombing attack on a London train, Trump wrote on Twitter that the new ban “should be far larger, tougher and more specific – but stupidly, that would not be politically correct.”

The expiring ban blocked entry into the United States by people from the six countries for 90 days and locked out most aspiring refugees for 120 days to give Trump’s administration time to conduct a worldwide review of U.S. vetting procedures for foreign visitors.

Critics have accused the Republican president of discriminating against Muslims in violation of constitutional guarantees of religious liberty and equal protection under the law, breaking existing U.S. immigration law and stoking religious hatred.

Some federal courts blocked the ban, but the U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to take effect in June with some restrictions.

 

(Additional reporting by James Oliphant, Yeganeh Torbati, and Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Peter Cooney)

 

U.S. Supreme Court breathes new life into Trump’s travel ban

People walk outside the the U.S. Supreme Court building after the Court granted parts of the Trump administration's emergency request to put his travel ban into effect immediately while the legal battle continues, in Washington, U.S., June 26, 2017

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to President Donald Trump by reviving parts of a travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority countries that he said is needed for national security but that opponents decry as discriminatory.

The justices narrowed the scope of lower court rulings that had completely blocked key parts of a March 6 executive order that Trump had said was needed to prevent terrorism in the United States, allowing his temporary ban to go into effect for people with no strong ties such as family or business to the United States. [http://tmsnrt.rs/2seb3bb]

The court issued its order on the last day of its current term and agreed to hear oral arguments during its next term starting in October so it can decide finally whether the ban is lawful in a major test of presidential powers.

In a statement, Trump called the high court’s action “a clear victory for our national security,” saying the justices allowed the travel suspension to become largely effective.

“As president, I cannot allow people into our country who want to do us harm. I want people who can love the United States and all of its citizens, and who will be hardworking and productive,” Trump added.

Trump’s March 6 order called for a blanket 90-day ban on people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and a 120-day ban on all refugees while the government implemented stronger vetting procedures. The court allowed a limited version of the refugee ban, which had also been blocked by courts, to go into effect.

Trump issued the order amid rising international concern about attacks carried out by Islamist militants like those in Paris, London, Brussels, Berlin and other cities. But challengers said no one from the affected countries had carried out attacks in the United States.

Federal courts said the travel ban violated federal immigration law and was discriminatory against Muslims in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Critics called it a discriminatory “Muslim ban.”

Ahmed al-Nasi, an official in Yemen’s Ministry of Expatriate Affairs, voiced disappointment.

“We believe it will not help in confronting terrorism and extremism, but rather will increase the feeling among the nationals of these countries that they are all being targeted, especially given that Yemen is an active partner of the United States in the war on terrorism and that there are joint operations against terrorist elements in Yemen,” he said.

Groups that challenged the ban, including the American Civil Liberties Union, said that most people from the affected countries seeking entry to the United States would have the required connections. But they voiced concern the administration would interpret the ban as broadly as it could.

“It’s going to be very important for us over this intervening period to make sure the government abides by the terms of the order and does not try to use it as a back door into implementing the full-scale Muslim ban that it’s been seeking to implement,” said Omar Jadwat, an ACLU lawyer.

During the 2016 presidential race, Trump campaigned for “a total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. The travel ban was a signature policy of Trump’s first few months as president.

‘BONA FIDE RELATIONSHIP’

In an unusual unsigned decision, the Supreme Court on Monday said the travel ban will go into effect “with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

A lack of a clearly defined relationship would bar from entry people from the six countries and refugees with no such ties.

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin, who successfully challenged the ban in lower courts, said that students from affected countries due to attend the University of Hawaii would still be able to do so.

Both bans were to partly go into effect 72 hours after the court’s decision. The Department of Homeland Security promised clear and sufficient public notice in coordination with the travel industry.

Trump signed the order as a replacement for a Jan. 27 one issued a week after he became president that also was blocked by federal courts, but not before it caused chaos at airports and provoked numerous protests.

Even before the Supreme Court action the ban applied only to new visa applicants, not people who already have visas or are U.S. permanent residents, known as green card holders. The executive order also made waivers available for a foreign national seeking to enter the United States to resume work or study, visit a spouse, child or parent who is a U.S. citizen, or for “significant business or professional obligations.” Refugees “in transit” and already approved would have been able to travel to the United States under the executive order.

A CONSERVATIVE COURT

The case was Trump’s first major challenge at the Supreme Court, where he restored a 5-4 conservative majority with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch, who joined the bench in April. There are five Republican appointees on the court and four Democratic appointees. The four liberal justices were silent.

Gorsuch was one of the three conservative justices who would have granted Trump’s request to put the order completely into effect. Fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion in which he warned that requiring officials to differentiate between foreigners who have a connection to the United States and those who do not will prove unworkable.

“Today’s compromise will burden executive officials with the task of deciding – on peril of contempt – whether individuals from the six affected nations who wish to enter the United States have a sufficient connection to a person or entity in this country,” Thomas wrote.

The state of Hawaii and a group of plaintiffs in Maryland represented by the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the order violated federal immigration law and the Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition on the government favoring or disfavoring any particular religion. Regional federal appeals courts in Virginia and California both upheld district judge injunctions blocking the order.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley. Additional reporting by Andrew Chung and Yeganeh Torbati in Washington and Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa, Yemen; Editing by Will Dunham and Howard Goller)

Another U.S. appeals court refuses to revive Trump travel ban

FILE PHOTO - International travelers arrive at Logan airport following U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order travel ban in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

By Dan Levine and Lawrence Hurley

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump suffered another legal setback on Monday as a second federal appeals court refused to revive his travel ban on people entering the United States from six Muslim-majority nations in a dispute headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals used narrow grounds to reject the Trump administration’s bid to undo a Hawaii federal judge’s decision blocking the temporary ban. It said the Republican president’s March 6 order violated existing immigration law. But the three-judge panel – all Democratic appointees – did not address whether it was unconstitutional discrimination against Muslims.

A second court, the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, on May 25 upheld a Maryland judge’s ruling that also blocked Trump’s 90-day ban on travelers from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The 4th Circuit had ruled that the ban, which replaced an earlier Jan. 27 one also blocked by the courts, “drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination” aimed at Muslims.

The 9th Circuit largely left in place a nationwide injunction by Judge Derrick Watson that stopped parts of the order, which Trump said was urgently needed to prevent terrorism in the United States. That ruling came in a lawsuit challenging the order brought by the state of Hawaii, which stated the ban would harm its universities and tourism industry.

Even before Monday’s ruling, the case was on the fast track to the Supreme Court, where the administration on June 1 filed an emergency request seeking to reinstate the order and hear its appeal of the 4th Circuit ruling. The Supreme Court could act on the administration’s request as soon as this week.

Trump has been on the losing side in all four court rulings on the March order. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the administration is reviewing Monday’s decision and expressed continued confidence that the order is fully lawful and ultimately will be upheld by the Supreme Court.

“I think we can all attest that these are very dangerous times and we need every available tool at our disposal to prevent terrorists from entering the United States and committing acts of bloodshed and violence,” Spicer told a briefing.

The 9th Circuit upheld the block on Trump’s three-month travel ban for the six countries and four-month suspension of all refugee admissions. But the court pared back part of Watson’s injunction in order to allow the government to conduct internal reviews on vetting procedures for these travelers.

The administration said the travel ban was needed to allow time to implement stronger vetting measures, although it has already rolled out some new requirements not blocked by courts, including additional questions for visa applicants.

Rather than focusing on Trump campaign statements as the Virginia-based court did, the 9th Circuit said the language in the executive order itself did not make a rational case for why a travel ban was needed.

“The order does not offer a sufficient justification to suspend the entry of more than 180 million people on the basis of nationality,” the court wrote, referring the combined populations of the six countries.

‘ATTRACTIVE WAY’

Under immigration law, the administration was required to make findings that entry of the people in question would be detrimental to the United States but failed to do so, the court said.

Stephen Vladeck, a professor at University of Texas School of Law, said the 9th Circuit provided an easier path for the Supreme Court to keep the travel ban on hold, because it avoided entirely the controversy over Trump’s campaign statements.

“It provides a very attractive way to leave the injunction in place without setting broader doctrinal rules about which they may have pause,” Vladeck said.

Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

Monday was the deadline for the ban’s challengers to respond to the administration’s request that the order be allowed to go into effect. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents people challenging the ban in the separate Maryland suit handled by the 4th Circuit, filed court papers urging the court not to take up the case, saying the order will become moot on Wednesday, 90 days from when Trump issued it.

Lawyers for Hawaii called the order a “thinly veiled Muslim ban.”

Trump’s earlier Jan. 27 order also included Iraq among the countries targeted and a total ban on refugees from Syria. The March order was intended to overcome the legal issues posed by the original ban, but was blocked before it could go into effect on March 16.

The suits by Hawaii and the Maryland challengers argued that the order violated federal immigration law and a section of the Constitution’s First Amendment that prohibits the government from favoring or disfavoring any particular religion.

Hawaii’s court papers mentioned a series of Trump Twitter posts on June 5. Trump described the order as a “watered down, politically correct” version of his original one.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington and Dan Levine In San Francisco and Ayesha Rascoe in Washington; Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

Trump picks conservative judge Gorsuch for U.S. Supreme Court

By Lawrence Hurley and Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Neil Gorsuch for a lifetime job on the U.S. Supreme Court, picking the 49-year-old federal appeals court judge to restore the court’s conservative majority and help shape rulings on divisive issues such as abortion, gun control, the death penalty and religious rights.

The Colorado native faces a potentially contentious confirmation battle in the U.S. Senate after Republicans last year refused to consider Democratic President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill the vacancy caused by the February 2016 death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia.

Gorsuch is the youngest nominee to the nation’s highest court in more than a quarter century, and he could influence the direction of the court for decades.

Announcing the selection at the White House flanked by the judge and his wife, Trump said Gorsuch’s resume is “as good as it gets.” Trump said he hopes Republicans and Democrats can come together on this nomination for the good of the country.

“Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous disciple, and has earned bipartisan support,” Trump said.

“Depending on their age, a justice can be active for 50 years. And his or her decisions can last a century or more, and can often be permanent,” Trump added.

Gorsuch is a judge on the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and was appointed to that post by Republican President George W. Bush in 2006.

Some Democrats in the U.S. Senate, which votes on whether to confirm judicial nominees, have already said they would seek to block whoever Trump nominates.

Gorsuch is considered a conservative intellectual, known for backing religious rights, and is seen as very much in the mold of Scalia, a leading conservative voice on the court for decades.

“I respect … the fact that in our legal order it is for Congress and not the courts to write new laws,” Gorsuch said, as Trump looked on. “It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people’s representatives. A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge, stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands.”

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the choice of Gorsuch was seen by the White House as a significant departure from Supreme Court nominations from the recent past, given that many justices have come from the eastern United States. Gorsuch lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he raises horses and is a life-long outdoorsman.

The official described Gorsuch as a mainstream judge who should easily be confirmed by the Senate. The official noted that the Senate confirmed him for his current judgeship in 2006 by voice vote with no one voting against him.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said that “the Senate owes the American people a thorough and unsparing examination of this nomination,” saying Trump “outsourced this process to far-right interest groups.”

The liberal advocacy group People for the American Way immediately opposed the nomination, with its president, Michael Keegan, describing Gorsuch as an “ideological warrior who puts his own right-wing politics above the Constitution.”

The administration official said the White House feels Gorsuch has the qualities that Democratic senators said they wanted to see in a justice during visits with senior Trump officials about filling the vacancy.

“He plays it straight. He sticks to principles, and his opinions reflect a consistency regardless of who is in his courtroom,” the official said of Gorsuch.

Trump made his choice between two U.S. appeals court judges, Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, according to a source involved in the selection process.

Gorsuch became the youngest U.S. Supreme Court nominee since Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991 selected conservative Clarence Thomas, who was 43 at the time.

He is the son of Anne Burford, the first woman to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She served in Republican President Ronald Reagan’s administration but resigned in 1983 amid a fight with Congress over documents on the EPA’s use of a fund created to clean up toxic waste dumps nationwide.

Trump’s selection was one of the most consequential appointments of his young presidency as he moved to restore a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that had been in place for decades until Scalia died at age 79 on Feb. 13, 2016.

Trump, who took office on Jan. 20, got the opportunity to name Scalia’s replacement only because the Republican-led U.S. Senate, in an action with little precedent in U.S. history, refused to consider Obama’s nominee for the post, appeals court judge Merrick Garland. Obama nominated Garland on March 16 but Republican senators led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell denied Garland the customary confirmation hearings and vote.

Trump has said his promise to appoint a conservative justice was one of the reasons he won the Nov. 8 presidential election, with Christian conservatives and others emphasizing the importance of the pick during the campaign. Trump last week said evangelical Christians would love his nominee.

Trump’s fellow Republicans hold a 52-48 majority in the Senate. The minority Democrats, irate over Garland’s rebuff, potentially could try to block the nomination with procedural hurdles.

The new appointee would expand the court’s conservative wing, made up of John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Kennedy long has been considered the court’s pivotal vote, sometimes siding with the liberals in key cases such as the June 2016 ruling striking down abortion restrictions in Texas.

The court’s restored conservative majority likely would be supportive toward the death penalty and gun rights and hostile toward campaign finance limits. Scalia’s replacement also could be pivotal in cases involving abortion, religious rights, presidential powers, transgender rights, voting rights, federal regulations others.

Gorsuch has strong academic qualifications, with an Ivy League education: attending Columbia University and, like several of the other justices on the court, Harvard Law School. He also completed a doctorate in legal philosophy at Oxford University, spent several years in private practice and worked in George W. Bush’s Justice Department.

Gorsuch joined an opinion in 2013 saying that owners of private companies could object on religious grounds to a provision of the Obamacare health insurance law requiring employers to provide coverage for birth control for women.

As long as Kennedy and four liberals remain on the bench, the court is not expected to pare back abortion rights as many U.S. conservatives fervently hope. The Supreme Court legalized abortion in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. In June, the justices ruled 5-3 to strike down a Texas law that restricted abortion access, with Kennedy and the liberals in the majority.

The current vacancy is the court’s longest since a 391-day void from 1969 to 1970 during Republican Richard Nixon’s presidency. After Abe Fortas resigned from the court in May 1969, the Senate voted down two nominees put forward by Nixon before confirming Harry Blackmun, who became a justice in June 1970. Aside from that one, no other Supreme Court vacancy since the U.S. Civil War years of the 1860s has been as long as the current one.

Some Democrats have threatened to pursue a procedural hurdle called a filibuster, meaning 60 votes would be needed in the 100-seat Senate unless its long-standing rules are changed. Trump’s fellow Republicans hold a 52-48 majority, meaning some Democratic votes would be needed to confirm his pick.

Trump said last week he would favor Senate Republicans eliminating the filibuster, a change dubbed the “nuclear option,” for Supreme Court nominees if Democrats block his pick.

Trump during his presidency may get to make additional appointments to the Supreme Court. Liberal Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who Trump called upon to resign last July after she called him “a faker,” is 83 while Kennedy is 80. Stephen Breyer, another liberal, is 78.

If any of those three is replaced by a Trump appointee, conservatives would be eager to bring cases challenging the Roe v. Wade ruling in the hope it would be overturned, long a goal for many Christian conservatives.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Chung, Richard Cowan, Susan Heavey, Ayesha Rascoe and Doina Chiacu; Writing by Alistair Bell and Will Dunham; Editing by Bill Trott and Peter Cooney)

George O. Wood, Head of the Assemblies of God, Offers a Grievous Warning American Christian Should Read Right Now

The United States Supreme Court

I feel impelled to write you this most unusual pastoral letter. I do it out of deep concern and I ask you to hear my heart.

We are on the precipice of losing critical religious liberty protections in our country. Over the past 25 years, the Supreme Court has severely limited the traditional understanding of the First Amendment to the Constitution. While matters like selection of ministers and internal doctrinal issues are probably not under near-term threat, the Constitution is no longer interpreted by courts to give people of faith, as well as the schools and service ministries we form, the protection we need in order to fully live out the implications of our most cherished beliefs. Meanwhile state courts, legislatures and city councils around the country have moved to further narrow the protections granted for religious liberty, as their citizens must choose between adherence to religious faith and full participation in the public square.

The threats to religious freedom that are now upon us can be likened to the frog put into a pan of water placed on the stove. The water warms gradually and the frog does not realize its peril until it is too late to jump out of the pan.

Many evangelical and Pentecostal believers and leaders have not been previously alarmed at how the “pan” has been gradually heated in the assault against religious liberty. For example, in our own Fellowship I and district offices contacted nearly two thousand credentialed ministers to support a religious freedom bill just a month ago that was before a committee in the Missouri House of Representatives. Less than 15 percent of them even bothered to respond. The bill failed in committee and significant religious liberty protections were lost. We are like the situation described by Jesus in the parable of the weeds and the wheat: “But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat” (Matt. 13:25). We have largely been sleeping. Have we awakened too late?

I trust not.

Certainly the pending act (as of this writing) in the California legislature should wake us up. The California Senate passed Senate Bill 1146 which would either force schools like our own Vanguard University to radically change their mission or close down. The bill seeks both to shame faith-based colleges and universities and to declare their students unworthy of benefits that are made available by the state to every other similar institution in California. Vanguard’s president, Dr. Mike Beals, stated: “This means that mission-based aspects of religious colleges and universities, which include prayer in classes, chapel services, spiritual formation activities and faith-infused curriculum, as well as requiring a statement of faith for admission and requiring ministry-based service experiences would be at risk if Senate Bill 1146 is passed as is.” The bill is an intentional and all-out assault on our religious distinctives.

As I write, the bill is under consideration by a House committee. The fact that it passed the state Senate and is under consideration by the state House should ring a ten-alarm bell. If the attempt to gut religious liberty for colleges and universities is successful in California, you can be sure other dominoes will fall in California and across the country.

The secularists in our society seek to redefine the First Amendment protection of the “free exercise” of religion, to a mere right of worship. In other words, their view is: “If you are going to be bigoted in your pro-life views or your view that marriage is between a man and a woman and that fornication (both heterosexual and homosexual) is morally wrong—then you must confine your views within the four walls of your sanctuary. But don’t bring your bigotry into the public square.” A society that adopts such a view may be setting the stage for a future day when even a defense of biblical teaching on human sexuality from the pulpit will bring with it the risk of punishment by the government such as in the loss of our long-held tax-exempt status without which many ministries would not survive.

At a recent meeting I attended in Washington, D.C. that dealt with the protection of religious liberty, the keynote speaker stated: “We are in mortal combat in this country over religious liberty.” Don’t believe me? Consider what Harvard Law School professor Mark Tushnet has written:

No conservatives demonstrated any interest in trading off recognition of LGBT rights for “religious liberty” protections. Only now that they’ve lost the battle over LGBT rights, have they made those protections central—seeing them, I suppose, as a new front in the culture wars … [T]aking a hard line (“You lost, live with it”) is better than trying to accommodate the losers … Trying to be nice to the losers didn’t work well after the Civil War, nor after Brown [v. Board of Education]. (And taking a hard line seemed to work reasonably well in Germany and Japan after 1945.) … [T]he war’s over, and we won … [T]taking a hard line means opposing on both policy and constitutional grounds free-standing so-called “religious liberty” laws … It also means being pretty leery about … agreement by Christian conservatives to support extending general nondiscrimination laws to cover the LGBT community in exchange for including ‘religious liberty’ exemptions.

On this analogy, people of faith are as bad as the Confederates and Jim Crow segregationists, as bad as World War II-era German Nazis and Japanese militarists. And notice that Tushnet is not just opposing religious freedom protections in nondiscrimination laws, he’s also opposing “free-standing so-called ‘religious liberty’ laws.” This kind of derision, by a prominent professor at an elite law school, is troubling.

How did we reach the place where we are? Let me suggest the following four steps are taking place, which have brought us to this point.

Caricature

Let me illustrate what I mean by caricature. Picture a first-grade class. The teacher is a wonderful young woman in her late twenties with two small children at home. She leaves the room momentarily and the class clown goes to the blackboard or white board and draws a frowning stick figure and labels it “teacher.” The stick figure drawn bears no relation to reality except in the mind of the first grader who drew it.

So, what is the caricature being given to Bible-believing Christians by the secular left? “Hateful, mean, bigoted, narrow-minded” and a host of other terms. This caricature doesn’t bear any resemblance to the overwhelming majority of Christians who bring great value to society through how they live, work and contribute to the public good.

Someone has said, “If I can define you, I can confine you.” Once the caricature above attaches to believing Christians, we become identified through that false lens. Thus, for example, when we attempt to support religious freedom bills in legislatures, we are immediately defined as “haters.” Big businesses and the media target legislative members and engender public support for the idea that core religious rights that were long the subject of broad societal consensus, are in fact unjustifiable shields for “bigoted” religious people and institutions that must not be tolerated.

Marginalization

Once the caricature is drawn, then it becomes easy to move to the next step—marginalization.

Think of this, for example, why is it that there is no evangelical on the Supreme Court? Evangelicals are one of the largest minorities in the United States. But, our pro-life position and views on marriage are regarded as not acceptable and militate against an appointment to the Supreme Court—and beyond that, to appellate courts and district courts. Our views are simply unacceptable to the political powers that be and we are sidelined from the public square— marginalized.

Ask yourself when you vote in the 2016 election: Would this candidate for president or the senate be more likely to appoint or vote to confirm a person with a pro-life and pro-marriage position as between a man and a woman? Would the presidential candidate be more likely to appoint people who will uphold the protection of the free exercise of religion, or erode it further?

Since the Supreme Court has now become a super-legislature in our country, my vote for president and Congressional candidates will depend entirely on the answers to the above questions in view of the fact that the next president will shape the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the culture of America for the next several decades.

It would be a step forward for truer diversity with evangelicals on the Supreme Court as well as other federal and state courts and in the executive branch of government. But even more important is the appointment of men and women of whatever faith, who understand and respect the value of religious freedom. Otherwise, we will continually be forced out of the public square and marginalized into smaller and smaller spaces that Christians can live in.

Discrimination

Once you can make a caricature of a group and marginalize them, you can discriminate against them.

The biggest examples of that, from a legal point of view, are the recent cases before the Supreme Court of Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor. In both cases, the present administration forcefully sought to discriminate against persons who, because of religious belief, did not want to facilitate abortions. Those decisions hung by a slim thread in the Supreme Court. Hobby Lobby won by a 5-4 vote, and the Little Sisters of the Poor case was sent back down to the lower courts, in all likelihood, because a majority of opinion could not be reached on a divided 4-4 Court. The appointment of one more pro-abortion judge to the Supreme Court will result in a far different result. Are you concerned about that? Do you want Hobby Lobby owners (who are Assemblies of God members) to be forced to go out of business because of their commitment to Jesus or the Little Sisters of the Poor to disband and stop serving the poor because of their convictions on life?

Another example that is impacting Assemblies of God colleges and universities as well as all schools who are members of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) is a recent change in the Department of Education (DOE). President Obama’s DOE leadership was bothered that schools like our own are exempt from Title IX provisions that permit religious educational institutions to decline admittance to or retention of students on the basis of same-sex behavior or gender identity. The DOE headlined their policy change with the caption: “Hidden Discrimination.” Every school that applies for the exception (even though a valid legal argument exists that an exemption to Title IX is provided to religious schools without their having to apply for the exemption) is then publicly listed. The intent is to shame these schools for being “discriminatory.” In other words, Christian institutions are discriminated against because they hold to biblical teaching on sexual morality.

The discrimination plays out in different ways. For example, a Christian college president in the northeast co-signed a letter organized by a centrist group of religious leaders asking that a then-pending executive order by President Obama on LGBT rights leave schools like his in the same legal position as before. It was polite and gracious. The community in which the college was located became enraged that the college had that position. The local school board made a decision that it would no longer accept student teachers from that college, and various public facilities were denied for usage by the college.

Next on the horizon is the possibility that accrediting associations will determine that a school which has behavioral standards for students regarding same-sex or gender identity relationships is a school not worthy of accreditation, and/or that companies, school boards, and graduate schools will not admit or employ graduates of schools who “discriminate” on the basis of sexual orientation and identity. Schools will either be forced to accept standards imposed on them or go out of business.

Persecution

Step one: make a caricature of persons committed to scriptural teaching on morality. Step two: marginalize them. Step three: discriminate against them. Finally, the last stage: persecute them.

This is what is pending in the California legislature as I write—the outright persecution of Christian institutions by a state that says, “We will attempt to humiliate and marginalize you if you don’t give in.”

What’s next? Unless present trends are reversed, I can envision a day not too far off in which faith-based parachurch educational and compassion institutions are forced to close if they retain biblical standards of sexual conduct for employment, or even requirements that employees, faculty, or students profess a Christian commitment.

The local church itself will be the last domino to fall in terms of persecution. Tax-exempt status may be lost. Ministers could lose the ministerial housing allowance. Donors may not be able to deduct charitable contributions. Churches which utilize their facilities for public events and compassion ministry, in addition to their times of worship, will be declared public places of accommodation and forced to provide marriage services to same-sex couples.

If you say, “Oh, that can never happen in America,” then let me remind you that we never thought a day would come when the White House would be lit up with the rainbow flag to celebrate a decision by the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage.

I have never written anything like I am writing to you now. I realize that what I am writing paints a very dark picture. You are now asking yourself, but what can we do? Here are some suggestions.

Pray

There may be some who are cynical about a call to pray. But, we know the Lord hears the prayers of His people. Let’s take to heart 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If my people, who are called by name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” We must pray for a third Great Awakening to come to America. Prayers of gratitude for the religious liberty we have enjoyed, and prayers of petition for its future protection should be an ongoing and regular part of our personal and corporate prayer life.

Engage

Use whatever means possible to exert your influence on our culture and political system. Be informed as a voter. Run as a candidate for office if you sense the Spirit asking that of you. Let your elected representatives hear from you on issues such as religious liberty protection.

It’s also vital that we understand that we advocate religious liberty for others, not just ourselves. It is against our religion to impose our religion. When we find persons, organizations, or religious bodies who stand with us on the First Amendment protection of the free exercise of religion, then we welcome their advocacy alongside our own.

Of course, being engaged requires being informed; helping those who worship in our churches every week to understand the nature of the challenges we face, honestly but without overstating, is a critical first step. Had Christians across Missouri truly understood what was at stake in the religious liberty bill that failed in that state legislature earlier this year, the outcome may have been different. We must educate in order to inspire action.

Watch Your Spirit

There’s a fascinating verse in Jude 9 that says, Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil in a dispute about the body of Moses, did not dare to pronounce upon him a railing judgment. But he said, “The Lord rebuke you!'” In other words, Michael did not behave like the devil in fighting the devil. We must take to heart the admonition of the apostle Paul, “The servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but must be gentle toward all people …” Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will “grant them repentance to a know the truth” (2 Tim. 2:24–25). Let’s be gracious as we take our stand on issues that concern us.

Do Good

The world may not agree with our beliefs, but they cannot deny when we do good. As individual believers and as a church together we must continue to serve others. We must be known as people of compassion and mercy. We are for the just treatment of others and we help the poor, the needy, the addicted, the wounded, the lonely and the downtrodden.

Keep Doing the Main Things

Our first and foremost call is to preach and live the gospel. Let’s keep the main things the plain things, and the plain things the main things. We must fulfill both the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20) and the Great Commandment (Matt. 22:37–39). That’s our priority! Let’s never substitute evangelism and discipleship with political action. Let’s keep eternal matters and temporal matters in perspective.

Our Battle Is Spiritual

God loved the world and so must we. We cannot give others any reason to identify us a “haters” or “bigots.” The world will not be won by Christians who are shaking their fists at sinners. Something is a truism when it is true. This truism is true: “We must hate the sin and love the sinner.” “For our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” (Eph. 6:12–13).

Rejoice

Nothing happening has caught the Lord by surprise. He told us we would be persecuted because of our loyalty to Him. But we are not to be angry about that or downcast. Instead, Jesus said: ”

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men revile you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake.12 Rejoice and be very glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in this manner they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matt. 5:10–12).

Thank you for letting me share my heart with you on this vital matter of religious liberty. In every dark time, believers have learned to say anew, “The Lord reigns!”

George O. Wood is general superintendent of the Assemblies of God (USA) and chair of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship.

Source: Charisma News – George O. Wood Offers a Grievous Warning American Christian Should Read Right Now

Transgender student asks U.S. high court to keep out of bathroom case

A sign protesting a recent North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access in Durham, North Carolina

By David Ingram

(Reuters) – Lawyers for a transgender high school student in Virginia asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to keep out of a legal dispute about bathroom rights, an issue that has emerged as an increasingly divisive one in the United States.

In court papers, lawyers for the student, Gavin Grimm, urged the Supreme Court to leave in place a lower court’s order in favor of Grimm while the litigation goes on.

The case is the first time the fight over transgender bathroom rights has reached the Supreme Court.

Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued on behalf of Grimm to challenge the Gloucester County School Board’s bathroom policy, which requires transgender students to use alternative restroom facilities.

Grimm, 17, was born a girl but now identifies as male.

A federal district court in June ordered the school board to allow Grimm to use the boys’ restroom for now, and this month the school board asked the Supreme Court for an emergency stay of that order.

Seeking to keep the order in place, ACLU lawyers wrote that no “irreparable harm” will occur if the Supreme Court keeps out of the case and Grimm uses the boys’ bathroom.

“In every context outside school, he uses the boys’ restrooms, just like any other boy would,” they wrote.

The school board’s application for a stay was directed to Chief Justice John Roberts, who has responsibility for emergency actions that arise from the appeals court that covers Virginia. Roberts could act alone or refer the matter to all eight justices. Five votes are needed to grant a stay application.

In court papers this month, the school board’s lawyers said the lower court wrongly deferred to President Barack Obama’s administration’s view that prohibitions on sex discrimination under federal law also apply to gender identity.

In May, the Obama administration directed public schools nationwide to allow transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity or risk losing federal funding. So far, 23 states have sued to block the directive.

Separately, the Justice Department sued North Carolina over a state law requiring people to use public bathrooms that correspond to the sex on their birth certificates.

An April ruling by the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of Grimm was the first by an appeals court to find that transgender students are protected under federal laws that bar sex-based discrimination.

(Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington)

Supreme Court strikes down Texas abortion law

Demonstrators hold signs outside the U.S. Supreme Court as the court is due to decide whether a Republican-backed 2013 Texas law placed an undue burden on women exercising their constitutional right to abortion in Washington

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to abortion rights advocates, striking down a Texas law imposing strict regulations on abortion doctors and facilities that its critics contended were specifically designed to shut down clinics.

The 5-3 ruling held that the Republican-backed 2013 law placed an undue burden on women exercising their constitutional right to end a pregnancy established in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The normally nine-justice court was one member short after the Feb. 13 death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who consistently opposed abortion in past rulings.

Conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy joined liberal members of the court in ruling that both key provisions of the law violate a woman’s constitutional right to obtain an abortion.

By setting a nationwide legal precedent that the two provisions in the Texas law were unconstitutional, the ruling imperils laws already in place in other states.

Texas had said its law, passed by a Republican-led legislature and signed by a Republican governor in 2013, was aimed at protecting women’s health. The abortion providers had said the regulations were medically unnecessary and intended to shut down clinics. Since the law was passed, the number of abortion clinics in Texas, the second-most-populous U.S. state with about 27 million people, has dropped from 41 to 19.

Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration supported the challenge brought by the abortion providers.

The Texas law required abortion doctors to have “admitting privileges,” a type of formal affiliation that can be hard to obtain, at a hospital within 30 miles (48 km) of the clinic so they can treat patients needing surgery or other critical care.

The law also required clinic buildings to possess costly, hospital-grade facilities. These regulations covered numerous building features such as corridor width, the swinging motion of doors, floor tiles, parking spaces, elevator size, ventilation, electrical wiring, plumbing, floor tiling and even the angle that water flows from drinking fountains.

The last time the justices decided a major abortion case was nine years ago when they ruled 5-4 to uphold a federal law banning a late-term abortion procedure.

Some U.S. states have pursued a variety of restrictions on abortion, including banning certain types of procedures, prohibiting it after a certain number of weeks of gestation, requiring parental permission for girls until a certain age, imposing waiting periods or mandatory counseling, and others.

Americans remain closely divided over whether abortion should be legal. In a Reuters/Ipso online poll involving 6,769 U.S. adults conducted from June 3 to June 22, 47 percent of respondents said abortion generally should be legal and 42 percent said it generally should be illegal.

Views on abortion in the United States have changed very little over the decades, according to historical polling data.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Adfam DeRose; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. top court rejects Exxon appeal in groundwater contamination case

Exxon Storage Tanks

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected Exxon Mobil Corp’s appeal of a $236 million judgment against the oil company in a case brought by the state of New Hampshire over groundwater contamination linked to a gasoline additive.

The justices left in place the New Hampshire Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling upholding the judgment by a jury that in 2013 spurned Exxon’s claims that the contamination linked to its fuel additive was not its fault but rather the fault of the local gas stations and storage facilities that spilled it.

Exxon argued in its appeal that its due process rights were violated because New Hampshire had not proved the company’s liability for the alleged pollution at each individual site.

The additive at the center of the case is called methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE. It is an oxygen-containing substance that was added to gasoline to promote more complete combustion and reduce air pollution.

It was one of several additives that had been recommended by regulators to reduce emissions but has now largely been phased out of the U.S. fuel supply because of the hazard it poses to groundwater.

New Hampshire’s lawsuit against Exxon, headquartered in Irving, Texas, dates back to 2003.

State officials called the $236 million judgment the largest MTBE-related verdict since states and other agencies began making claims for remediation and other damages. Exxon said in court papers it is the largest-ever jury verdict in New Hampshire.

In 2014, Exxon also appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court a $105 million jury verdict in favor of New York City over MTBE contamination, but the court declined to hear the case.

The case is Exxon Mobil v. New Hampshire, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 15-933.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Iran asks U.N. chief to intervene with U.S. after court ruling

United Nations Secretary General Ban arrives to a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif at U.N. headquarters in New York

By Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Iran asked U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday to convince the United States to stop violating state immunity after the top U.S. court ruled that $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets must be paid to American victims of attacks blamed on Tehran.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote to Ban a week after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, calling on the Secretary-General to use his “good offices in order to induce the U.S. Government to adhere to its international obligations.”

Zarif’s appeal comes amid increasing Iranian frustration at what they say is the failure of the United States to keep its promises regarding sanctions relief agreed under an historic nuclear deal struck last year by Tehran and six world powers.

In the letter, released by the Iranian U.N. mission, Zarif asked Ban to help secure the release of frozen Iranian assets in U.S. banks and persuade Washington to stop interfering with Iran’s international commercial and financial transactions.

“The U.S Executive branch illegally freezes Iranian national assets; the U.S Legislative branch legislates to pave the ground for their illicit seizures; and the U.S Judicial branch issues rulings to confiscate Iranian assets without any base in law or fact,” Zarif said.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s top adviser Ali Akbar Velayati was quoted by Iranian state media as saying that “Iran will never abandon its right and will take any necessary action to stop such an international theft.”

“This money belongs to Iran,” he said.

Ban’s spokesman and the U.S. mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the letter or the accusations made against the United States.

Zarif told Ban he wanted to “alert you and through you the U.N. general membership about the catastrophic implications of the U.S. blatant disrespect for state immunity, which will cause systematic erosion of this fundamental principle.”

The U.S. Supreme Court found that the U.S. Congress did not usurp the authority of American courts by passing a 2012 law stating that Iran’s frozen funds should go toward satisfying a $2.65 billion judgment won by the U.S. families against Iran in U.S. federal court in 2007.

“It is in fact the United States that must pay long overdue reparations to the Iranian people for its persistent hostile policies,” Zarif wrote, citing incidents including the shooting of an Iranian civil airliner in 1988.

Last week Zarif met several times with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in New York to discuss Iranian problems accessing international financial markets.

Tehran has called on the United States to do more to remove obstacles to the banking sector so that businesses feel comfortable investing in Iran without fear of penalties.

Some hardline lawmakers have called on the government of President Hassan Rouhani to consider the ruling a violation of the nuclear deal reached with the United States and other major powers in 2015.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Ankara)

U.S. Top Court appears unlikely to revive immigrants plan

mmigration activists holding American flag rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s bid to save his plan to spare millions of immigrants in the country illegally from deportation and give them work permits ran into trouble on Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court in a case testing the limits of presidential power.

The court, with four conservative justices and four liberals, seemed divided along ideological lines during 90 minutes of arguments in the case brought by 26 states led by Texas that sued to block Obama’s unilateral 2014 executive action that bypassed Congress.

Liberal justices voiced support for Obama’s action. The conservatives sounded skeptical. A 4-4 decision would be a grim defeat for Obama because it would uphold lower court rulings that threw out his action last year and doom his quest to revamp a U.S. immigration policy he calls broken.

More than a thousand people in favor of Obama’s action staged a raucous demonstration outside the white marble courthouse on a sunny spring day, with cheery mariachi music from a red-and-black clad band filling the air. A smaller group of Obama critics staged their own rally.

In order to win, Obama would need the support of one of the court’s conservatives, most likely Chief Justice John Roberts or Anthony Kennedy. But they both at times hit the Obama administration’s lawyer, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, with tough questions.

Kennedy expressed concern that Obama had exceeded its authority by having the executive branch set immigration policy rather than carry out laws passed by Congress.

“It’s as if the president is setting the policy and the Congress is executing it. That’s just upside down,” Kennedy said.

A ruling is due by the end of June.

Obama’s plan was tailored to let roughly 4 million people – those who have lived illegally in the United States at least since 2010, have no criminal record and have children who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents – get into a program that shields them from deportation and supplies work permits.

Obama said the program, called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), was aimed at preventing families from being torn apart.

The case comes during a heated presidential campaign in which the status of the roughly 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally, most of them from Mexico and other Latin American nations, has been a central theme. Immigration is also a global concern, with Europe now struggling with a flood of immigrants fleeing violence in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.

The Republican-governed states that filed suit asserted that the Democratic president overstepped his authority provided in the Constitution while his administration said he merely provided guidance on how to enforce deportation laws.

A 4-4 ruling is possible because there are only eight justices following February’s death of conservative Antonin Scalia.

POSSIBLE COMPROMISE

One possible compromise outcome would be that the court could uphold Obama’s plan in part while leaving some legal questions unresolved, including whether the government can provide work permits to eligible applicants.

Obama would also win if the justices decide the states had no legitimate grounds to sue. Texas said it had “standing” to sue because it would be hurt by the additional costs it would incur by providing driver’s licenses to those given legal status.

Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted the “basic problem” that the government lacks the resources to deport everyone in the country illegally, meaning it must set priorities.

“There are these people who are here to stay, no matter what,” Ginsburg said.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized Texas’ argument about the economic harm caused by Obama’s action, saying millions of immigrants “are here in the shadows” and will affect the economy “whether we want (them) to or not.”

Verrilli said the federal government has regularly launched programs aimed at giving large groups of immigrants temporary legal status as part of its role establishing enforcement priorities due to limited resources.

Asked by Roberts if the government has the power to allow all immigrants who are in the country illegally to stay, Verrilli said: “Definitely not.”

Shortly before the plan was to take effect, a federal judge in Texas blocked it after the states filed suit. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision in November.

Obama’s executive action arose from frustration within the White House and the immigrant community about a lack of action in politically polarized Washington to address the status of people living in the United States illegally.

He took the action after House of Representatives Republicans killed bipartisan legislation, called the biggest overhaul of U.S. immigration laws in decades and providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, that was passed by the Senate in 2013.

Obama, stifled by Republican lawmakers on many of his major legislative initiatives, has drawn Republican ire with his use of executive action to get around Congress on immigration policy and other matters including gun control and healthcare.

(Additional reporting by Clarece Polke and Robert Iafolla)