5 KEY POINTS FROM COURT’S RULING
Here are five take-aways from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ unanimous, 29-page opinion on the travel ban:
The three judges believe they are well within their rights to check the president’s authority on matters of immigration and national security, and the government’s suggestion to the contrary is undemocratic.
“Instead, the Government has taken the position that the President’s decisions about immigration policy, particularly when motivated by national security concerns, are unreviewable, even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections. The Government indeed asserts that it violates separation of powers for the judiciary to entertain a constitutional challenge to executive actions such as this one. There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.”
The court isn’t buying — as Trump has suggested — that the impact of the order was limited to extra vetting for 109 people.
“The impact of the Executive Order was immediate and widespread. It was reported that thousands of visas were immediately can- celled, hundreds of travellers with such visas were prevented from boarding airplanes bound for the United States or denied entry on arrival, and some travellers were detained.”
The court thinks the states of Washington and Minnesota have actual harms they can sue over.
“Specifically, the States allege that the teaching and research missions of their universities are harmed by the Executive Order’s effect on their faculty and students who are nationals of the seven affected countries.”
The court doesn’t believe the government needs to immediately reinstate the ban to protect national security.
“The Government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the Order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States. Rather than present evidence to explain the need for the Executive Order, the Government has taken the position that we must not review its decision at all. We disagree.”
The court wouldn’t even give the government its fallback position — a modification of the earlier judge’s suspension of the ban
“More generally, even if it might be overbroad in some respects, it is not our role to try, in effect, to rewrite the Executive Order.”