the american media is strangely silent on this. it's telling.

but, what the aclu is doing, here, is upholding it's own strawman; the administration denied from the start that it was a muslim ban to begin with, and that's the crux of the ruling: the administration's actions were never intended to be a muslim ban, and can be upheld on those terms (while clarifying that a muslim ban would be unconstitutional, and the reasons why, and how to ensure that this doesn't happen).

i very rarely disagree with the aclu, or it's canadian equivalent (the ccla). i'm not even disagreeing with them, here, really. but, i'm calling them out on a dishonest presentation. this was not about civil liberties, it was about politics, and they should re-examine their mandate in the wake of their loss.

it's not the aclu, exactly, that i'm pointing fingers at, either, but the broader neo-liberal identity politics crew that jumped on this as a wedge issue and got a bunch of circuit judges on their side by gaming the media. they began by accusing the administration of all kinds of things that were obviously untrue. on the basis of these false accusations, they got injunctions they never should have gotten (but, when you yell fire in a crowded court room, that court is more likely to put down a temporary stop until the issue can be dealt with more rigorously). then, when it gets to a real hearing, they claim they've won when the court upholds that their frivolous accusations are unconstitutional - even as it upholds what the administration was actually trying to do. then, they try and spin it as a political victory, even though the administration got exactly what it actually wanted.

if you go back a few months, you'll see i analyzed this correctly at the time.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/clear-victory-president-trump-muslim-ban-20-hardly