Another U.S. appeals court keeps Trump’s travel ban blocked
Another U.S. appeals court stomped on President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban Monday, saying the administration violated federal immigration law and failed to provide a valid reason for keeping people from six mostly Muslim nations from coming to the country.
The decision by a unanimous three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals helps keep the travel ban blocked and deals Trump a second big legal defeat on the policy in less than three weeks.
The administration has appealed another ruling against the ban to the Supreme Court, which is likely to consider the cases in tandem.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia last month cited the president’s campaign statements as evidence that the 90-day ban was unconstitutionally “steeped in animus and directed at a single religious group.”
The 9th Circuit, which heard arguments in Seattle last month in Hawaii’s challenge to the ban, found no need to analyze Trump’s campaign statements. It ruled based on immigration law, not the Constitution.
“Immigration, even for the president, is not a one-person show,” the judges said. “The president’s authority is subject to certain statutory and constitutional restraints.”
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer says the administration is confident that Trump’s travel ban will be upheld by the Supreme Court after its latest legal blow.
Spicer told reporters that the White House is reviewing the opinion but maintains the order is “fully lawful.”
He says “these are very dangerous times” and the U.S. needs “every available tool at our disposal to prevent terrorists from entering the United States and committing acts of bloodshed and violence.”
Judges Michael Hawkins, Ronald Gould and Richard Paez — all appointed by President Bill Clinton — said the travel ban violated immigration law by discriminating against people based on their nationality when it comes to issuing visas and by failing to demonstrate that their entry would hurt American interests.
Trump issued his initial travel ban on a Friday in late January, bringing chaos and protests to airports around the country. A Seattle judge blocked its enforcement nationwide in response to a lawsuit by Washington state — a decision that was unanimously upheld by a different three-judge 9th Circuit panel.
The president then rewrote his executive order rather than appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court at that time. The new version, designed to better withstand legal scrutiny, named six countries instead of seven — dropping Iraq — and spelled out more of a national security rationale.