Member-only story

The Freakout Over Trump’s Executive Order on Jews Was Wrong

Trump’s draft order defining Judaism as a nationality simply adds clarity to an already widely agreed upon legal view

Ted Frank
GEN
4 min readDec 11, 2019

Photo: Mandel Ngan/Getty Images

EEarly Tuesday evening, the New York Times Politics Twitter account tweeted out that “President Trump will sign an executive order defining Judaism as a nationality,” and Twitter immediately went into overdrive. Was Trump classifying Jews as un-American and promoting the dual-loyalty smear? Were Nazi deportations and Nuremberg Laws around the corner? No. The sky isn’t falling. The Trump executive order simply enshrines as policy decades of existing anti-discrimination laws meant to protect Jews.

The issue is this: a number of anti-discrimination laws are phrased as protecting people from discrimination based on “race or nationality” — but not religion. Do these laws reach discrimination against Jews?

The consensus has long been yes. In a 1987 Supreme Court decision, Justice Byron White, a JFK appointee, held that Jews were a “race or nationality” protected by the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The decision was unanimous, joined by liberal icons like Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan.

But it was unclear if the Supreme Court’s reasoning applied to the same “race or nationality”…

Create an account to read the full story.

The author made this story available to Medium members only.
If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.

Or, continue in mobile web

Already have an account? Sign in

GEN
GEN

Published in GEN

A former publication from Medium about politics, power, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Ted Frank
Ted Frank

Written by Ted Frank

Director of Litigation, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute (http://hlli.org) Twitter:@tedfrank

Responses (8)

Write a response

1. I don’t know a single American Jewish person who considers themselves to be Isreali. They are Americans. 2. If trump really gave a crap about antisemitism he’d stop hiring Nazis.

How about discussing the real motive for this? This is yet more pathetic pandering to Netanyahu on behalf of the Trump administration to suppress the BDS movement.
It’s disgusting.

Jews are practitioners of a monotheistic belief system. They are not a nation. This move by the Trump administration places Jews in an awkward situation within America. Are they to be equated with First Nations? Are they to be separate but equal? Will this ultimately lead to an internal passport marked “Juden?”