The Justice Department has turned to segregation era court rulings to defend Donald Trump's Muslim ban.

Seriously - I'm not kidding.

They've really stooped that low.

In a brief filed with the Fourth Circuit of Appeals before Monday's oral arguments, the Justice Department cited a 1971 Supreme Court case that allowed Jackson, Mississippi to flout a desegregation order.

To briefly summarize this case, Jackson had been ordered to desegregate its public parks and pools - but instead of doing as it was told, it just closed them all down.

It was obvious to everyone what Jackson was doing, but in a 5 - 4 decision the Supreme Court upheld the move, saying that it couldn't just strike down a legitimate act of a legislature because of bad intentions of the people behind it.

Today, scholars consider this decision one of worst by the Supreme Court, but the Trump Justice Department says it proves that Donald Trump's campaign trail statements about banning Muslims are immaterial to the constitutionality of the Muslim ban itself.

In this case, the motive have been pretty clear. Trump called for a Muslim Ban. His surrogates have described this as a Muslim ban. His campaign website has deleted the page that originally had his press release titled: "Donald J. Trump Statement On Preventing Muslim Immigration." The page is deleted, but the link metadata is still up there, which has Muslim Ban in it.

This is an insult to our intelligence, isn't it?


-Thom


(What do you think? Tell us here.)

In for Thom tonight, please welcome Sam Sacks, The District Sentinel News Co-op



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