An appeal to reason

In a 10-3 vote, a Virginia federal appeals court upheld an injunction blocking the Trump administration’s ban on travel and immigration from six Muslim-majority countries. The legality of that executive order — which began in the campaign as a proposed ban on all Muslim entry to the U.S., then morphed into a narrower but still arbitrary policy — is now likely to be decided by the Supreme Court.

But one passage of the 68-page ruling by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals bears close reading:

“The government has repeatedly asked this court to ignore evidence, circumscribe our own review and blindly defer to executive action, all in the name of the Constitution’s separation of powers.

“We decline to do so, not only because it is the particular province of the judicial branch to say what the law is, but also because we would do a disservice to our constitutional structure were we to let its mere invocation silence the call for meaningful judicial review.

“The deference we give the coordinate branches is surely powerful, but even it must yield in certain circumstances, lest we abdicate our own duties to uphold the Constitution.”