Over the past year, particularly after the Supreme Court's ruling last summer in Trump v. Hawaii (the travel ban case), many Americans have been asking, "Does religious freedom apply equally to all religious communities in America?" The matter again came to the fore with February and March cases involving death row inmates. Underlying the differential treatment of Muslim claimants versus other claimants are a multitude of factors: effective lawyering, public perception, and yes, judicial bias, too.
Trump v. Hawaii provoked concerns about unfairness on the court in large part because it was decided a mere three weeks after Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a case that involved a Christian baker who refused on religious grounds to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. In that case, the court ruled against the commission because it had made several hostile statements about the baker's religion and this hostility, the court said, invalidated the commission's actions. But in the travel ban case, a majority of the court said the president's overt hostility toward Muslims was not relevant to the constitutionality of the travel ban, because the president deserved near-total deference in matters of national security and foreign policy.
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