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
Early 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”…
