Legal scholars said Monday that GOP front-runner Donald Trump's call to ban all Muslims from coming into the United States is a violation of constitutional and international laws, and would not stand up in the nation's courts.
"This would not only violate international law, but do so by embracing open discrimination against one religion. It would make the United States a virtual pariah among nations," Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law expert at George Washington University, told
The Washington Post.
Earlier in the day, Trump drew fire from Republicans and Democrats alike after calling for a "complete and total shutdown" on
Muslims entering the United States, making the most dramatic response by a candidate yet to a shooting spree last week by two Muslims who the FBI says were radicalized.
"We have no choice," Trump said at a rally in South Carolina, warning of more Sept. 11-style attacks if stern measures are not taken.
Trump's call is "blatantly unconstitutional," said Richard Friedman, a law professor at the University of Michigan.
"That's blatantly unconstitutional if it excludes U.S. citizens because they are Muslims. It's ridiculous," said Friedman, pointing out the Constitution's clause on equal protection and the First Amendment, which protects freedom of religion.
Other experts, though, said that while the Constitution's protections do not apply to non-Americans, Trump's plan would break international law and the many agreements the United States has signed.
"We have treaties, all sorts of relationships with other countries," Palma Yanni, a D.C. immigration lawyer and past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told The Post.
"I'm sure it would violate innumerable treaties if we suddenly started banning citizens of NATO countries, of Southeast Asian countries."
There has been one time the United States proposed a ban, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which stopped Chinese immigration for 10 years, but the experts said Trump's plan goes further as it targets a religion rather than another country.
"A nation could argue that national security provides a rationale for barring immigrants from particular countries engaged in civil wars," Turley said. "But those rationales fall by the wayside when you are using an arbitrary criteria like religion."
Also, Yanni told the Post, religion is not "on any passport that I've ever seen," and he believes the plan is "impossible."