The following is a guest post by People For the American Way Board Chair Lara Bergthold.
What we saw over the weekend was extraordinary. President Trump’s discriminatory anti-Muslim executive actions were stayed, in part, by judges who understood the Constitution and acted to protect Muslim immigrants who were targeted by the Trump administration based on their religion. As the board chair of People For the American Way I was proud to stand with my fellow Americans to call for the immediate release of detainees being held at our nation’s airports against the rule of law, and we cheered when the judges’ rulings were announced. We now know that the only thing standing between Trump’s anti-constitutional actions and the rule of law are judges who can act independently and fairly to uphold the Constitution and protect our rights.
We are told that tonight President Trump will nominate a replacement for Justice Scalia to the Supreme Court. We have no reason to believe that this nominee will be a mainstream, bipartisan choice, but especially after this president’s actions, we have every reason to resist and oppose any nominee who will serve to rubber stamp Trump’s anti-constitutional efforts.
Now more than ever we need to trust that the Supreme Court still stands for preservation and protection of the Constitution. Judges across the land carry out the critical work of our judicial system, but ultimately it is the Supreme Court that is the final arbiter of justice. I will be standing at the Supreme Court tonight to ensure that senators oppose any nominee who would put their own ideology above the Constitution and let Trump carry out his plans to make our country unrecognizable. It is now all of our duty as citizens to resist and speak out on behalf of the injustice that is being perpetrated against so many of us.