The Political Solicitor General

Joshua Geltzer was quoted by Harvard Magazine in a piece about the relationship between the Solicitor General and the Supreme Court under the Trump administration.

The Trump administration claimed the ban was “religion-neutral,” with restrictions “expressly based on the President’s national-security and foreign-policy judgments.” A prime point of contention was the stream of statements Trump had made stressing his aim of barring Muslims from the United States. When the Court heard oral argument in the case, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. ’76, J.D. ’79, assumed Trump had made the statements with that purpose. Roberts asked Hawaii’s lawyer: “If tomorrow he issues a proclamation saying he’s disavowing all those statements, then the next day he can reenter this proclamation” and “your discrimination argument would not be applicable?” The lawyer said, “Absolutely.”

Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco, representing the administration, asserted in rebuttal that there was nothing to disavow: “Well, the President has made crystal clear on September 25th that he had no intention of imposing the Muslim ban.” The following day in Slate, Joshua A. Geltzer, a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University, explained why that assertion was inaccurate. “Here’s the problem. No such thing seems to have happened on September 25th.” He went on, “Time and again, Trump and the White House have said the opposite of what Francisco represented to the court on Wednesday.”