A second United States court has voted to uphold a block on President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting travel from six mostly Muslim countries.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled unanimously Monday against Trump’s temporary ban, on the grounds that the president overstepped his authority when he issued his March 2 executive order, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry in the United States.”
The three-judge panel said that while the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) gives the president broad powers to both control entrants to the U.S. and protect U.S. security, “immigration, even for the President, is not a one-person show.”
Monday’s decision echoed a previous ruling by the Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which on May 25 upheld a Maryland judge’s ruling blocking parts of the order. But the two courts made very different arguments.
The 4th circuit focused largely on statements and tweets made by Trump that indicated his order was a ban on Muslims, something he had advocated during his campaign for president. But the 4th circuit was only ruling on the portion of the law restricting travel from the six countries for 90 days. The 9th circuit ruled more broadly and honed in on the INA and what it saw as insufficient justification to support the travel order.
“In suspending the entry of more than 180 million nationals from six countries, suspending the entry of all refugees, and reducing the cap on the admission of refugees from 110,000 to 50,000 for the 2017 fiscal year, the President did not meet the essential precondition to exercising his delegated authority: The President must make a sufficient finding that the entry of these classes of people would be ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States,'” the judges wrote.
The Trump administration has appealed the 4th circuit ruling to the Supreme Court, asking for immediate relief from restraining orders issued on both coasts.
The travel order that was the subject of Monday’s ruling is the second attempt at a travel order by the Trump administration. The first was withdrawn after it, too, was stayed by a district court. That stay was also upheld by the 9th circuit.
…