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For those seeking a legal justification for keeping Muslims out of U.S. politics, the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 has been the go-to law to misrepresent. During legal fights over President Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim travel ban, that law was commonly and erroneously cited as an example of a legal precedent that would allow for banning Muslims and other groups from entering the United States. In August 2018, following Muslim politician Ilhan Omar’s win in a Democratic primary for Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District, references to the McCarran-Walter Act (frequently referred to incorrectly online as a 1953 act) began appearing on social media in support of the claim that No Muslims can hold public office within the USA according to this 1952 law. Some commenters wondered online why the act wasn’t being enforced, posting exhortations such as the following: The Act, which upheld a controversial quota system for immigration first established in 1924, was passed (over President Truman’s veto ) in the context of Cold War-era fears: One provision of the law (Chapter 2: Section 212) is most commonly cited by those spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric. That provision allows certain United States government officials to deny entry to anyone deemed to pose a threat to the government, and xenophobic interpretations of the law have simply replaced a previous era's fear of communism with a contemporary fear of Islam: Asserting that this law bars Muslims from holding office would require several demonstrably false things to be true. First, it would require that the only Muslims in the United States be aliens who entered the country as immigrants. Since the 1952 act concerns only foreign nationals seeking to enter the U.S. and/or to obtain visas, it is wholly irrelevant to questions of suitability for public office for those Americans who are both Muslim and resident U.S. citizens. Second, the notion that this law would be applicable to Muslims at all would require it be demonstrated that the entire Muslim faith, universally, seeks to engage in activities whose purpose of which is the opposition to, or the control or overthrow of, the Government of the United States by force. The McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 allowed the U.S. to deny citizenship to persons belonging to organizations deemed to be a threat to the government. While that singular aspect of the law remains on the books, not one aspect of that law or its successors is concerned with the suitability of any person to hold public office, and therefore the claim that this act bars Muslims from holding office is false. We note as well that the Constitution is clear on the impermissibility of imposing religious requirements on those seeking public office: No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. A related meme asserted that the McCarran-Walter Act, which precluded Muslims from holding office, had been repealed by Congress in 1990: This broad claim is false, because as we noted above, the McCarran-Walter Act never prohibited Muslims from holding public office in the U.S. Congress did vote on the issue in 1990, but that body only approved repealing the provision of the McCarran-Walter Act barring foreigners from visiting the U.S. because of their political beliefs, not repealing the entire act: Back in 1990, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi were members of the U.S. House of Representatives, and John McCain, Joe Biden, Al Gore, Johk Kerry, and Mitch McConnell were members of the U.S. Senate. Dick Cheney, however, was serving as secretary of defense in the George H.W. Bush administration and thus had no vote in the matter.
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