Another U.S. appeals court keeps Trump’s travel ban blocked

SEATTLE — 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 Mr. Trump a second big legal defeat on the policy in less than threeweeks.

At the same time, lawyers for Hawaii told the Supreme Court on Monday that letting the Trump administration enforce a ban on travel from six mostly Muslim countries would “thrust the country back into the chaos and confusion” that resulted when the policy was first announced in January.

The administration has appealed another ruling against the ban to the Supreme Court, which is expected to consider the cases intandem.

If the travel ban is to be salvaged, the Supreme Court would have to move quickly because the measure is supposed to be temporary. With a Supreme Court recess looming, the ban could expire before the justices reach a decision — unless they grant the Justice Department’s request to stay the injunctions on the ban.

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 Mr. Trump’s campaign statements. It ruled based on immigration law, not the Constitution.

“Immigration, even for the president, is not a oneperson show,” the judges said. “The president’s authority is subject to certain statutory and constitutional restraints.”

Judges Michael Hawkins, Ronald Gould and Richard Paez — all appointed by then-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.

The president’s order did not tie citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen to terrorist organizations or contributors to “active conflict,” the court said. It also did not provide any link between their nationality and their propensity to commit terrorism.

“In short, the order does not provide a rationale explaining why permitting entry of nationals from the six designated countries under current protocols would be detrimental to the interests of the United States,” the panel said.

Because of the conflict with immigration law, the judges said they didn’t need to consider whether it also violated the Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring or disfavoring any religion. The 4th Circuit found the policy unconstitutional on that basis.

The 9th Circuit also kept blocking Mr. Trump’s suspension of the U.S. refugee program. The court said he was required to consult with Congress in setting the number of refugees allowed into the country in a given year and that he could not decrease it midyear.

The refugee program is not at issue in the 4th Circuit case.

A Justice Department spokesman said officials were preparing a response.