Abortion and Travel Ban Rulings Are Victory for GOP Tactics on Gorsuch

WASHINGTON — The consequences of President Donald Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court — and the Republican blockade of President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick B. Garland in 2016 for that seat — reverberated powerfully Tuesday as the court’s conservative majority handed down major decisions on Trump’s travel ban and abortion rights.

Social conservatives cheered the court’s ruling that a California law requiring “crisis pregnancy centers” to provide abortion information likely violates the First Amendment, their latest win to advance their anti-abortion cause since Trump has taken office. Some conservatives also viewed the ruling as another opportunity for them to energize their base before the November elections.

But as conservative Christian political groups rushed to praise the court’s ruling on crisis pregnancy centers, they were relatively silent about the court’s other decision to uphold the Trump administration’s travel ban, a move that prompted outrage and fear just as swiftly from liberal activists and politicians.

“These 5-4 decisions remind us of the key role Justice Neil Gorsuch plays on the Supreme Court and why 81 percent of evangelicals voted for President Trump,” said Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, which filed an amicus brief in support of the pregnancy centers.

Democratic politicians and others on the left expressed outrage over the two decisions, with many focusing on the travel ban ruling and describing it with words like “shameful,” “troubling” and “wrong.”

“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,” the Democratic National Committee said in a statement about the travel ban ruling. “This is part of a larger assault by President Trump and congressional Republicans on our nation’s values of inclusion and opportunity for all people.”

For many social conservatives, the court’s support of their anti-abortion cause justifies their decision to vote for Trump in 2016, despite widespread misgivings. For many liberals, the decisions underscored their worst fears about the audacious Republican tactics in 2016 to block Obama’s more progressive nominee for the Supreme Court, Garland, after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. The Republican majority in the Senate refused to convene a hearing or a vote on Garland’s nomination, insisting that the next president should fill the seat — a highly controversial move that some legal scholars called unprecedented.

“As one after another 5-4 rulings of this SCOTUS on voting rights, abortion rights, the travel ban and more are announced, the full meaning of @SenMajLdr’s unconscionable, nearly yearlong blockade against the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland is manifest,” wrote David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Obama, on Twitter on Tuesday.

As conservative Christian political groups focused more on the pregnancy centers than the travel ban, other religious leaders decried the latter ruling as immoral.

“There was hope that America’s legal system would protect against this administration’s anti-Muslim bigotry and clearly articulated agenda to put a quota on Muslims coming to America,” Sohaib Sultan, imam and Muslim life program coordinator at Princeton University, said of the ruling in an interview. “But, it sadly seems that fear mongering has won over religious diversity and freedom.”

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., wrote in a tweet: “This nation was built upon the promise that people of all faiths should be welcome to our shores. Today’s decision is an utter failure on that promise and an abdication of our moral leadership.”

In pews across America, the political fight is complicated. In California, Daniel Balcombe is the pastor of the evangelical Living Way Church near San Diego, a church that has had a notable Persian immigrant influx in recent years. While he praised the court’s ruling on California’s crisis pregnancy centers, he was dismayed at the travel ban ruling, and said he would be reaching out today to talk with immigrants in his church.

“The Bible says there’s a time to weep and a time to rejoice,” Balcombe said in an interview. “Sometimes those happen at the same time.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that opposes abortion rights, called Tuesday’s ruling on pregnancy centers “wind in the sails for President Trump’s overall pro-life agenda,” and stressed the importance of the court for her organization’s midterm organizing efforts.

“There could be one or several vacancies on the Supreme Court in the next two years,” she said. “President Trump is committed to nominating pro-life justices, but in order to confirm them, we must have a pro-life majority in the Senate.”