June 12 (UPI) — Another federal appeals court — the 9th Circuit based in western United States — ruled against President Donald Trump‘s travel ban from six Muslim majority nations Monday.
The three-judge panel in Seattle unanimously affirmed a ruling by Hawaii Circuit Judge Derrick Watson on March 29. After the ruling, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he was “amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power.”
But the appeals court judges said that “immigration, even for the president, is not a one-person show.”
“We conclude that the president, in issuing the executive order, exceeded the scope of the authority delegated to him by Congress,” judges Michael Daly Hawkins, Ronald Gould and Richard Paez wrote.
“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.’ ”
On May 25, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia ruled 10-3 against the travel ban of nationals from Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Those justices wrote the policy was “steeped in animus and directed at a single religious group.” The majority noted Trump’s campaign pledge to bar Muslims from entering the country.
The court also faulted the White House for rushing out the first version of the executive order without consulting with the national security agencies and causing confusion at airports in the United States.
On June 1, the Justice Department asked the U.S. Supreme Court to immediately reinstate Trump’s executive order and to consider the legality in an appeal of the ruling by the 4th Circuit.
The Ninth Circuit also ruled on Feb. 9 against the first travel ban, signed on Jan. 27 by Trump. The judges in San Francisco backed a circuit court judge in Seattle.
Trump said his second order, signed March 6, was a “watered down” version of the first, crafted to withstand the legal challenges that prompted the first order to be struck down — specifically, that it applied a religious test to those seeking to enter the United States.
Trump’s revised travel ban removed Iraq from the list of nations. It also dropped language that would have given Christians in affected countries the first opportunity to apply for visas and refugee status and added language to make clear that existing green card and visa holders are exempt, which was a point of confusion during the rollout of the first order.
