The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a preliminary injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s travel ban should remain in effect for now. It’s the second appeals court decision in less than a month to maintain a nationwide stay on the ban, NPR reports.
Monday’s decision centers on an executive order to temporarily suspend the admission of refugees to the U.S. and limit travel from some majority-Muslim countries. It’s Trump’s second attempt at such a policy, as the first executive order was issued in late January, with no advance notice, causing chaos for some travelers and prompting swift legal challenges.
After that the order was blocked by courts, and the White House issued a second executive order, omitting references to religion and specifically exempting green card holders. That one was challenged by lawsuits and blocked by injunctions before it ever went into effect.
There are multiple cases pending against the revised order. The one before the Seattle-based 9th Circuit was the case of Hawaii versus Trump — the first lawsuit filed by a state against the revised travel ban.
The 9th Circuit sided with the state of Hawaii in deciding that the ban should stay on hold as the cases against it move through the courts. The judges were not directly ruling on the merits of the travel ban itself; however, to evaluate whether the injunction was appropriate, they had to weigh the probable impact of the travel ban and the likelihood that a case against it would succeed.
They concluded the travel ban would probably cause irreparable damage if it went into effect and that the revised executive order “does not offer a sufficient justification to suspend the entry of more than 180 million people on the basis of nationality”.
It’s the second such decision in less than a month. The Richmond, 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld another nationwide injunction against the President’s travel ban. Both courts were broadly skeptical of the government’s argument that the President — who has wide latitude on issues of immigration — was well within his rights to issue the executive order.
The President has “broad power, but that power is not absolute”, the 4th Circuit ruled. The 9th Circuit took a similar stance on Monday, writing that “immigration, even for the President, is not a one-person show.”
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