The weird odyssey of President Donald Trump's travel bans continues. The original ban, signed as an executive order Jan. 27, barred absolutely all immigrants and refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The countries had actually been chosen by the State Department of former President Barack Obama. Obama never signed a ban, but Trump did.

The first travel ban never took effect, as the federal courts in Brooklyn, Seattle and Honolulu in which it was challenged by people from the affected countries who had visas to enter the United States enjoined it almost immediately. When the Department of Justice challenged those injunctions, it lost. The basis for the judicial invalidations of the first ban was that it constituted a government decision based on religion.

Since the religion clauses of the First Amendment protect everyone — not just citizens — and since the seven countries designated by the Obama and Trump State departments and barred under Trump's executive order were predominantly Muslim, and since candidate Trump had made very harsh anti-Muslim comments during the campaign, the courts ruled that the travel ban was actually a Muslim ban and thus was unconstitutional.

Before the DOJ could appeal its losses to the Supreme Court, President Trump signed a second travel ban March 6. It rescinded the original ban and articulated a national security and geographic basis for barring entry from six countries (eliminating Iraq). It, too, was challenged in the same federal courts as the first ban, and it suffered the same fate for the same reasons. This second ban reached the Supreme Court, which, by a 6-3 vote, invalidated the injunctions imposed by lower-court judges against it but carved out an exemption from the ban.