Should Courts Consider Trump's Campaign Rhetoric in Making Decisions?

In his excellent rundown of yesterday’s ruling by the Ninth Circuit refusing to reinstate President Trump’s immigration executive order, National Review’s David French noted something rather curious about the court’s rationale. In essence, the court said that Trump’s campaign rhetoric was an issue to be considered when determining the validity of the order. French notes that this is pretty specious reasoning:

The court didn’t rule that Trump’s campaign statements rendered the order invalid, but it clearly forecast that it might. Never mind that the order plainly isn’t a Muslim ban, and never mind that the campaign statements weren’t made about the order in question. The mere fact that at one point he stated a desire to ban all Muslims may be used to cut through the “considerable deference” the court owes the president. While there is precedent for considering lawmaker motivations in the Establishment Clause context, the consideration of sweeping campaign statements (about a different kind of measure entirely) push that precedent to the breaking point.

There’s another reason why this should raise eyebrows. As the Washington Examiner’s Phil Klein notes, it wasn’t that long ago that the Supreme Court ruled similar rhetoric from President Obama was irrelevant. Obama wasn’t campaigning for office, but he was trying to sell Obamacare.