A federal appeals panel on Thursday unanimously rejected President Donald Trump’s bid to reinstate his ban on travel into the United States from seven largely Muslim
nations.
The ruling is a sweeping rebuke of the administration’s claim that the courts have no role as a check on the president.
The three-judge panel, suggesting that the ban did not advance national security, said the administration had shown “no evidence” that anyone from the seven nations — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — had committed terrorist acts in the US.
The ruling also rejected Trump’s claim that courts are powerless to review a president’s national security assessments. Judges have a crucial role to play in a constitutional democracy, the court said.
The decision was handed down by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, San Francisco. It upheld a ruling last Friday by federal district judge James L Robart, who blocked key parts of the travel ban, allowing thousands of foreigners to enter the country. The appeals court acknowledged that Trump was owed deference on his immigration and national security policies. But it said the president was claiming something more – that “national security concerns are unreviewable, even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections”.
Within minutes of the ruling, Trump angrily vowed to fight it, presumably in an appeal in the Supreme Court.
At the White House, the president told reporters the ruling was a “political decision” and predicted his administration would win an appeal “very easily”.