Appeals court rejects travel ban

Ruling says order ‘rooted in animus,’ aimed at Muslims

USA TODAY

A federal appeals court in Richmond delivered yet another blow Thursday to President Donald Trump’s effort to institute a travel ban targeting six majority-Muslim countries, making a Supreme Court showdown more likely.

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled 10-3 to uphold a lower court’s decision that barred the Trump administration from implementing its second attempt at the travel ban. Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote that changes made to the revised travel ban removing any mention of religion did not fix the fact that the order unfairly and illegally targets Muslims.

“From the highest elected office in the nation has come an executive order steeped in animus and directed at a single religious group,” the court said in a 79-page opinion, accompanied by several concurrences and dissents.

The court said the claim that the ban was aimed at protecting national security was a “secondary justification for an executive order rooted in religious animus and intended to bar Muslims from this country.” The scathing opinion consistently referenced Trump’s own words on the campaign trail and after he was elected, which it said made clear his true intention.

Because of that religious animus, the court ruled that Trump’s executive order could never “survive any measure of constitutional review.”

The White House has said the temporary ban is needed to improve vetting procedures to ensure terrorists do not enter the United States as travelers or refugees. Justice Department lawyers have argued in court that statements made during a political campaign should not factor into actions taken by an elected official.

But the judges even questioned whether the government established enough of a national security threat to warrant a blanket ban against people from the six targeted countries. In a separate opinion, Judge Barbara Milano Keenan wrote that Trump needed to show more than “vague uncertainty” about people coming from those countries to deem all 180 million residents as national security risks.

In a dissent signed by two other judges, Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote that the majority ignored long-held precedents.

Niemeyer said there were more than enough reasons for a president to institute the “modest action” of temporarily suspending immigration from the targeted countries, given their ties to terrorism.