Despite the findings of the Supreme Court, the government is compelling judges to treat Rwanda as a safe country.
The passage of the Rwanda Bill late last night, after a parliamentary showdown ended between the Commons and the Lords, has been met with condemnation and outrage by a number of human rights groups.
Some have described it as a ‘national disgrace’ while others slammed it as cruel and inhumane.
Sunak had made stopping small boat crossings across the channel a major priority, with his Rwanda Bill a key part of his plans in doing so. The Prime Minister says that the first flights removing asylum seekers who arrive illegally to the UK to the east African country are due to take off in 10-12 weeks time.
So why are human rights groups condemning the legislation and why are they concerned?
Rwanda is not a safe country, Supreme Court rules
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Disregarding domestic and international law
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‘Genuine refugees would be at risk of being returned to their home countries, where they could face harm’
Citing 14th Amendment, Michigan Voters File Suit to Bar Trump From 2024 Ballot (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
The 9-0 ruling which reverses a decision by the Colorado Supreme Court, warned one pro-democracy watchdog, “undermines the integrity of our Constitution and emboldens those seeking to disrupt and dismantle our democratic systems.”
This a breaking story… Check back for possible updates…
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump a resounding legal victory on Monday by rejecting a push by Colorado voters to have him disqualified from the state’s ballot under a clause of the 14th Amendment on the grounds that the former president was guilty of insurrection due to his actions leading up to and on January 6, 2021.
Though the Colorado Supreme Court last year ruled in favor of the argument to exclude Trump in this year’s election, Monday’s 9-0 ruling said, “Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 [of the 14th Amendment] against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse.”
The decision by the nation’s highest court was unanimous, though Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson—the three liberals on the Court—signed a concurring opinion in the judgment, indicating a varied reason for supporting the underlying decision. In addition to Colorado, officials in Maine and Illinois have moved to remove Trump from the ballot.
“The Supreme Court couldn’t exonerate Trump because the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming, so instead the Justices neutered our Constitution’s built-in defense against insurrectionists and said the facts don’t matter.”
Supporters of the effort to disqualify Trump from seeking public office due to his insurrectionary words and deeds following the 2020 election results, which he refused to accept, condemned the Court for Monday’s ruling.
“This decision is disgraceful,” said Ron Fein, legal director of Free Speech For People (FSFP), which pioneered the first litigation under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment and co-led the successful Illinois challenge. “The Supreme Court couldn’t exonerate Trump because the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming, so instead the Justices neutered our Constitution’s built-in defense against insurrectionists and said the facts don’t matter.”
Legal experts said the ruling did not hinge on the question of whether or not Trump was, in fact, guilty of insurrection but only that Colorado was not qualified to invoke the 14th Amendment.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court just overturned our win in Colorado barring Donald Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment.
But crucially, the Court did *not* exonerate Trump of insurrection. They had the chance to do so and chose not to.
“Yes, the Supreme Court ruled for Trump based on only Congress having the power to enforce the 14th amendment,” said Norm Eisen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and an outspoken Trump critic. “But just as important as what they did is what they didn’t do They did not expressly challenge that he was an insurrectionist—and the concurrence emphasizes that finding.”
Common Cause called the ruling a “major setback for democracy” that sets a worrying precedent.
“This decision undermines the integrity of our Constitution and emboldens those seeking to disrupt and dismantle our democratic systems. For over 200 years, all but one of our leaders have abided by the Constitution and practiced the peaceful transfer of power,” said Kathay Feng, the group’s vice president of programs.
“This ruling reverses the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision, and with it, green lights future presidents to intimidate, threaten, and attack Congress into obedience,” Feng added. “Our Constitution depends on checks and balances. Removing states as a check on tyrannical presidents threatens the future of our democracy.”
In its statement, FSFP people said the ruling was “dangerous” as it “encourages Trump–and those who follow his example–to engage in more insurrections and disregard more broadly the Constitution.”
“As one Senator explained in 1866 when advocating for Section 3, ‘the man who has once violated his oath will be more liable to violate his fealty to the Government in the future,'” the group noted. “The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment learned this lesson in blood, and gave us Section 3 to prevent a repeat. With today’s ruling, the Supreme Court has utterly failed in its duty to uphold this constitutional mandate at this critical moment in history. “
Colombian President Gustavo Petro speaking on February 13 from the Industrial University of Santander in Bucaramanga. Photo: Presidencia Colombia
The delay in the election of the Attorney General at the center of the ongoing tensions with the right, was highlighted by the United Nations Human Rights office and IACHR
Colombia’s Supreme Court will convene on February 22 to elect the country’s Attorney General (AG). The Supreme Court had already convened on two occasions, January 25 and February 8, for the same purpose but was unable, or as some allege, unwilling, to elect one of the three candidates proposed by President Gustavo Petro for the post back in August. The court’s refusal to elect one of Petro’s candidates for the post, has been at the center of what some have termed a “soft coup” or a destabilization campaign against the left-wing president’s government.
Petro himself said on February 2 that the court’s refusal to move forward was “institutional rupture that has reached its most desperate point, because the mafia does not want to control the entire sections of the Attorney General’s office that I have put in danger for having presented a shortlist of decent women.”
The Attorney General in Colombia is part of the judicial branch of power and has the role of investigating and accusing those who are alleged to be responsible for committing crimes.
On Monday February 12, the mandate of former AG Francisco Barbosa expired. Barbosa was appointed by former far-right president Iván Duque who is also his close friend from university. The AG has had open conflict with the current president, telling Blu Radio in May 2023 “I think Gustavo Petro is irresponsible” when Petro had warned of possible foul play in the AG’s investigation of members of Petro’s Historic Pact party.
On January 25, the same day that the Supreme Court was first set to elect his replacement, Barbosa ordered a raid of the Bogotá office of the Federation of Colombian Educators (FECODE) over allegations of improper contributions to Gustavo Petro’s presidential campaign. The move was widely condemned by social movements and trade unions in the country as being politically motivated.
With his term up, Barbosa’s deputy prosecutor and close ally, Martha Mancera, has taken up the post in the interim – until the Court makes its decision. Mancera has been named in different scandals, including an alleged cover up of an agent from the Attorney General’s investigative body who was involved in drug trafficking and arms trafficking.
On Wednesday February 14 at an event in the Industrial University of Santander in Bucaramanga, Petro said, “The government doesn’t agree that the Attorney General should be handed over to people with dubious reputation, that could have links, it seems and according to media investigations, with organized crime.”
International bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) also expressed concern over the delay in the Supreme Court’s deliberations. In a statement published on February 13, the body said that a further delay in the selection of an AG, “could weaken the Colombian justice system” and that the Supreme Court must “fulfill its constitutional duty”.
On February 14, the UN Office of Human Rights in Colombia also declared that it was closely following the AG election process. In its statement, it highlighted the role the AG plays in “guaranteeing access to justice, democratic consolidation, and Rule of Law”, and as such, it “encourages the Supreme Court to conclude the process of selection of the AG in the shortest time possible”.
Both statements by the IACHR and the UN alluded to allegations by the right-wing that the citizen protests in dozens of cities across Colombia on February 8 to demand that the Court carry out its constitutional obligation, were an attempt by Petro to subvert rule of law and disrupt the Supreme Court’s process. The allegations are based on a video from a protest in Bogotá which depicts a couple of demonstrators attempting to rush the barricade at the gates of the Court while other protesters are leaving the site. Many analysts have stated that those depicted in the video were seemingly right-wing infiltrators.
Nevertheless, right-wing media has launched full scale attacks on protesters and Petro, and the Attorney General’s office claimed “possible crimes were committed” and opened up a special investigation.
Added to the growing pressure on Petro’s administration, is the direct attack on his foreign minister, Álvaro Leyva, who is under investigation by the Ombudsman and suspended from his position for three months over allegations of irregularities in the bidding process for passport processing. In reality, Leyva had taken steps to confront a private firm, Thomas Gregs and Sons, that had a major contract with the state for processing passports and had control over a significant amount of the population data in the country.
Petro had said that renowned jurists called the suspension of the foreign minister unprecedented and he termed it “institutional rupture”.
With growing pressure on the court to fulfill its constitutional mandate, the Supreme Court’s session on February 22 is set to be an important date, while the movements and social organizations that mobilized and campaigned to put Petro’s government of change in office have vowed to defend it at all costs.
An oil and petroleum refinery is shown in St. Paul Park, Minnesota. (Photo: jferrer/iStock/Getty Images Plus)
“Big Oil companies will continue fighting to escape justice, but for the third time in a year, the U.S. Supreme Court has denied their desperate pleas,” said one campaigner.
For the third time in less than a year, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed a key case against the fossil fuel industry to proceed in state court, delivering a win for the movement to make polluters pay for driving the climate emergency.
“This decision is another step forward for Minnesota’s efforts to hold fossil fuel giants accountable for their climate lies and the harm they’ve caused,” said Center for Climate Integrity president Richard Wiles, pointing to the previous denials of other cases last April and May.
“Big Oil companies will continue fighting to escape justice, but for the third time in a year, the U.S. Supreme Court has denied their desperate pleas to overturn the unanimous rulings of every single court to consider this issue,” he continued.
“It’s time for these polluters to give up their failed arguments to escape state courts.”
As legal leaders of dozens of U.S. states and municipalities have launched climate lawsuits in recent years, the fossil fuel industry has attempted to evade accountability by shifting the cases to federal court—a strategy that’s proven unsuccessful.
Wiles argued that “after three strikes, it’s time for these polluters to give up their failed arguments to escape state courts and prepare to face the evidence of their climate deception at trial.”
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Monday decision came in a case filed in 2020 by Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute (API), based on the state’s consumer protection laws.
“The fraud, deceptive advertising, and other violations of Minnesota state law and common law that the lawsuit shows they perpetrated have harmed Minnesotans’ health and our state’s environment, infrastructure, and economy,” Ellison said at the time.
The justices declined Big Oil’s request to review the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ March decision that the case belongs in state court. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, an appointee of former GOP President Donald Trump, would have taken the case, in line with his position last year.
Climate activists have had extraordinary success in keeping their lawsuits against fossil fuels companies in state court, where they're generally considered more likely to succeed than in the federal judiciary; today's order continues that streak.
“I appreciate the court’s consideration and decision,” Ellison said in a statement Monday. “It aligns with 25 federal court decisions across the country, all of which have found that cases like ours rest on these defendants’ failures to warn and their campaigns of deception around their products’ contributions to the climate crisis. The court’s decision confirms these cases are properly filed in state courts.”
“Taken together, the defendants’ behavior has delayed the transition to alternative energy sources and a lower-carbon economy, resulting in dire impacts on Minnesota’s environment and enormous costs to Minnesotans and the world,” he stressed. “Now, the case can move forward in state court, where it was properly filed, and we can begin to hold these companies accountable for their wrongful conduct.”
Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for Fossil Free Media and the Make Polluters Pay campaign, declared Monday that “today’s decision is an important step forward for accountability and justice.”
“The Supreme Court has now laid out an unmistakable path forward,” she added, “for not only Minnesota’s consumer protection case against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and API, but the dozens of cases against the fossil fuel industry popping up across the county.”
This post has been updated with comment from Keith Ellison.
The Rwanda deal was signed when Priti Patel was home secretary. Rwanda visit April 14, 2022. Image: UK Home Office.
Before publishing this article unaltered, I draw your attention to these excerpts:
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It is important to note that the supreme court’s decision is not a comment on the political viability of the Rwanda plan, or on the concept of offshoring asylum processes generally. The ruling focused only on the legal principle of non-refoulement, and determined that in this respect, Rwanda is not a “safe third country” to send asylum seekers.
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This ruling is likely to revive discussion about the UK leaving the European convention on human rights (ECHR), which holds the UK to the non-refoulement obligation. Some Conservatives, including the former home secretary Suella Braverman, have argued that leaving the convention would make it easier to pass stronger immigration laws.
But while handing down the supreme court judgment, Lord Reed emphasised that there are obligations towards asylum seekers that go beyond the ECHR. The duty of non-refoulement is part of many other international conventions, and domestic law as well. In other words, exiting the ECHR would not automatically make the Rwanda plan lawful or easier to implement.
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So it would appear that UK is not going to be sending refugees to Rwanda despite Rishi Sunak and Conservative claims that it will.
Supreme court rules Rwanda plan unlawful: a legal expert explains the judgment, and what happens next
The UK supreme court has unanimously ruled that the government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlawful.
Upholding an earlier decision by the court of appeal, the supreme court found that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda may be at risk of refoulement – being sent back to a country where they may be persecuted, tortured or killed.
The courts cited extensive evidence from the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) that Rwanda does not respect the principle of non-refoulement – a legal obligation. The UNHCR’s evidence questioned the ability of Rwandan authorities to fairly assess asylum claims. It also raised concerns about human rights violations by Rwandan authorities, including not respecting non-refoulement with other asylum seekers.
It is important to note that the supreme court’s decision is not a comment on the political viability of the Rwanda plan, or on the concept of offshoring asylum processes generally. The ruling focused only on the legal principle of non-refoulement, and determined that in this respect, Rwanda is not a “safe third country” to send asylum seekers.
The ruling is another blow to the government’s promise to “stop the boats”. And since the Rwanda plan is at the heart of its new Illegal Migration Act, the government will need to reconsider its asylum policies. This is further complicated by Conservative party infighting and the firing of home secretary Suella Braverman, just two days before the ruling.
How did we get here?
For years, the UK government has been seeking to reduce small boat arrivals to the UK. In April 2022, the UK and Rwanda signed an agreement making it possible for the UK to deport some people seeking asylum in Britain to Rwanda, without their cases being heard in the UK. Instead, they would have their cases decided by Rwandan authorities, to be granted (or rejected) asylum in Rwanda.
While the Rwanda plan specifically was found to be unlawful, the government could, in theory, replicate this in other countries so long as they are considered “safe” for asylum seekers.
The government has not yet sent anyone to Rwanda. The first flight was prevented from taking off by the European court of human rights in June 2022, which said that British courts needed to consider all human rights issues before starting deportations.
A UK high court then decided in December 2022 that the Rwanda plan was lawful.
Catch up on our other coverage of the Rwanda plan:
Ten asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Sudan and Albania challenged the high court ruling, with the support of the charity Asylum Aid. Their claim was about whether Rwanda meets the legal threshold for being a safe country for asylum seekers.
The court of appeal said it was not and that asylum seekers risked being sent back to their home countries (where they could face persecution), when in fact they may have a good claim for asylum.
The government has since passed the Illegal Migration Act. The law now states that all asylum seekers arriving irregularly (for example, in small boats) must be removed to a safe third country. But now that the Rwanda deal has been ruled unlawful, there are no other countries that have said they would take asylum seekers from the UK.
What happens next?
Former Home Secretary Suella ‘Sue-Ellen’ Braverman continued with the Rwanda policy.
It is clear that the government’s asylum policies will need rethinking. Should another country now be designated as a safe country and different arrangements put in place, these will probably be subject to further legal challenges, including in the European court of human rights and in British courts.
This ruling is likely to revive discussion about the UK leaving the European convention on human rights (ECHR), which holds the UK to the non-refoulement obligation. Some Conservatives, including the former home secretary Suella Braverman, have argued that leaving the convention would make it easier to pass stronger immigration laws.
But while handing down the supreme court judgment, Lord Reed emphasised that there are obligations towards asylum seekers that go beyond the ECHR. The duty of non-refoulement is part of many other international conventions, and domestic law as well. In other words, exiting the ECHR would not automatically make the Rwanda plan lawful or easier to implement.
The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has said that he is working on a new treaty with Rwanda and is prepared to change domestic laws to “do whatever it takes to stop the boats”.
The UK is not the only country to attempt to off-shore asylum processing. Germany and Italy have recently been considering finding new safe third countries to accept asylum seekers as well.
But ensuring these measures comply with human rights obligations is complicated. International law requires states to provide sanctuary to those fleeing persecution or risk to their lives. As this ruling shows, the UK is not going to find an easy way out of these obligations.
