A ruling from the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals marks the second appeals court decision against Trump’s revised ‘travel ban.’ This is a blow for the Trump administration which has repeatedly defended the ban.
The ruling, issued on Mondayfrom a three judge panel was unanimous and upheld most aspects of a ruling made in March by Federal District Court in Hawaii that stayed Trump’s revised version of his travel ban.
That ban, an executive order issued by Trump, temporarily blocked refuges and nationals from six majority Muslim nations from coming to the US and has faced repeated challenges since an initial order was issued in January.
This latest court room battle comes after the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a similar decision last month which also upheld a lower court’s decision blocking the ban. The Trump administration has already decided to challenge that decision in the US Supreme Court.
While the Fourth Circuit wrote that the ban was in violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution which prohibits government establishment of religion, the Ninth Circuit challenged the ban on the statutory grounds that Trump had acted beyond his authority under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act.
According to the decision that law “requires that the President exercise his authority only after meeting the precondition of finding that entry of an alien or class of aliens would be detrimental to the interests of the United States. Here, the President has not done so.”
The court added, “The order does not offer a sufficient justification to suspend the entry of more than 180 million people on the basis of nationality” and that “National security is not a ‘talismanic incantation’ that once invoked, can support any and all exercise of executive power.”
This decision from the Ninth Circuit further complicates Trump’s position on the travel ban and will likely impact how the Supreme Court handles the issue.
