Thread: Appeals Court Will Not Reinstate Trump’s Revised Travel Ban

Appeals Court Will Not Reinstate Trump’s Revised Travel Ban

By ADAM LIPTAK MAY 25, 2017


Protesters gathered outside the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. before the court examined a ruling to block President Trump’s travel ban earlier this month. CreditSteve Helber/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., on Thursday refused to reinstate President Trump’s revised travel ban, saying it discriminated on the basis of religion. The decision was a fresh setback for the administration’s efforts to limit travel from several predominantly Muslim countries.

Mr. Trump had narrowed the scope of his first executive order, issued in January, in response to an earlier appeals court decision halting it. But the basic flaws in his approach remained, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled.

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The case is now likely to go to the Supreme Court.
Mr. Trump issued his initial order on Jan. 27, a week into his presidency. Less than two weeks later, an appeals court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, affirmed an order halting it.

Though Mr. Trump vowed to fight the ruling, he did not appeal to the Supreme Court. Instead, he issued a revised executive order.

The new order’s 90-day suspension of entry from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen was more limited and subject to case-by-case exceptions.

It omitted Iraq, which had been listed in the earlier order, and it removed a complete ban on Syrian refugees. And it deleted explicit references to religion.

Like the earlier order, the new one suspended the nation’s refugee program for 120 days and reduced to annual number of refugees to 50,000 from 120,000.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/us/politics/trump-travel-ban-blocked.html

This is how great nations fall. Shame on the courts. What they are doing is using select sound-bytes of free political speech exercised during a campaign against our President to weaken the powers of the Presidency with the only outcome being an increased threat to our national security. Libya where the Manchester Bomber is from is one of the countries on the travel ban. Syria where they also traveled is on the travel ban. Yemen where we are fighting Al Qaeda is on the travel ban. Iran who funds and sponsors terrorism is on the travel ban. Somalia and Sudan are also on the travel ban and are known high-terror risks and we have many people already in our country from these 2 countries.

What the DemoQuacks and courts have done here is a disgrace to our 3 separate branches of government and extremely harmful to our nation.

US Justice Department needs to back off this route to secure America. You can not risk taking this further in the court system, you might win but you will risk losing and if you lose, the right to ban is lost forever. Trump needs to stop with the travel ban Executive Order and do it through reviews. He needs to reduce the number of refugees to zero next year and pray we get through the rest of this year without an event.

This is a dark day in our country. Shame on the courts.

by IAN MASON
25 May 2017
Richmond, VA

An en banc panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld an injunction against President Donald Trump’s executive order curtailing travel and immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries Thursday.

The 10-3 majority, in a 67-page opinion, affirmed the decision of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, in essence holding that even an executive order that makes no mention of Islam in its text can be invalidated for violating the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause because of comments Trump and his associates made during and after the 2016 presidential election.

Calling the Establishment Clause a “untiring sentinel for the protection of one of our most cherished founding principles,” Chief Judge Roger Gregory’s opinion for the court calls the travel ban “an Executive Order that in text speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.”

“Congress granted the President broad power to deny entry to aliens, but that power is not absolute,” Gregory writes, discounting that the wide latitude given to the President under the Immigration and Nationality Act to deny entry to classes of travelers and immigrants on national security grounds justifies President Trump’s executive order.

The majority then launches into a litany of quotes from President Trump, his advisers, and his campaign website made during and after the election season of 2016, as proof that the travel ban represents a government “purpose” to favor one religion over another. Relying on Establishment Clause precedent that has never been applied in the immigration context, the court decided that the administration’s proffered purpose of keeping Americans safe from terrorism was a mere pretext for disfavoring the Islamic faith.

One quote used to establish an unacceptable purpose was that of then-Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Peirson on CNN that, “I think Islam hates us … [W]e can’t allow people coming into the country who have this hatred … [w]e’ve allowed this propaganda to spread all through the country that [Islam] is a religion of peace.”

The court dismisses the national security rationale for the order, conducting its own inquiry into the efficacy of the travel ban in protecting Americans. The majority cites “former National Security Officials” saying the order serves “no legitimate national security purpose” and that “there is no evidence of any new security risks emanating from these countries.”

The majority also gave credence to the claims of some of the Muslim plaintiffs, represented by a litany of progressive legal groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union, that the existence of the travel ban causes them irreparable damages by causing “them feelings of disparagement and exclusion” or feeling “isolated and disparaged in [their] community.” They cite one plaintiff who claimed that his wife, who wears the hijab in public “sense[s] a lot of hostility from people” and that his hijab-wearing neices “say that people make mean comments and stare at them for being Muslim.”

Each of the three dissenting Judges filed separate dissenting opinions and joined in each others’. Judge Paul Niemeyer, relying on precedent that holds that the foreign affairs context in which the executive order operates is the apex of executive power, chatised the majority for its refusal to limit its inquiry to the text of the order itself:

In looking behind the face of the government’s action for facts to show the alleged bad faith, rather than looking for bad faith on the face of the executive action itself, the majority grants itself the power to conduct an extratextual search for evidence suggesting bad faith, which is exactly what three Supreme Court opinions have prohibited.

Thursday’s ruling represents a ruling on the merits of the case and cements the injunction preventing the order from coming into effect. The only avenue remaining for the administration to continue its defense of the order is a petition for a writ of certiorari from the Supreme Court of the United States. This would set up a final showdown over the constitutionality of the travel ban before the nation’s highest court.

As the travel ban was always a temporary measure only to apply for 90 days, a term set to expire in June, the government will likely have to petition the Supreme Court on an emergency basis in order to have the Court reconvene to hear arguments before the case becomes moot.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...ourt-showdown/

As the travel ban was always a temporary measure only to apply for 90 days, a term set to expire in June, the government will likely have to petition the Supreme Court on an emergency basis in order to have the Court reconvene to hear arguments before the case becomes moot.

The case is already moot. Need to back away on this one. This is just an injunction issue, it's not the trial. You can go to trial and if you lose go to the US Supreme Court. In my view, the way they've posed it as racism vs national security, you can't win at the US Supreme Court on this particular case without divulging classified information to justify the national security issue. It's a no win deal, damned if you do, damned if you don't. Just back away and solve the problem another way. The DOJ has a lot of problems that aren't Sessions fault. You've got all those Sally Yates and Hillary/Obama Shrills in there. They can't win an argument. I've listened to some of them at some of these briefs before the 9th circuit, they aren't making compelling arguments in a winning way. We already know from what Sally Yates has done the DOJ is not interested in fixing our country, it isn't interested in the welfare of US citizens, it was bought and sold a long time ago and have been pursuing politics instead of justice for decades, and they focus on risking American citizens whose rights they're paid to protect by instead throwing Americans under the bus to protect rights of foreign nationals that don't even exist.

BACK AWAY NOW. DOJ should have backed away a month ago.

Liberal Judges Ignore Trump’s Sunday Summit with 50 Muslim Leaders – Rule Against Travel Ban Due to His Islamophobic ‘Words’

Jim Hoft May 25th, 2017 9:06 pm



Liberal Appellate Court Judges today ruled that President Trump’s proposed travel ban is illegal because of their perceived belief that the President is bigoted against Muslims due to his previous statements.

The liberals completely disregarded the fact that President Trump just stood with 50 of the world’s top Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia in unison against terrorism!

The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today against the President’s temporary travel ban stating it:

"“speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination,” a federal appeals court said Thursday in ruling against the executive order targeting six Muslim-majority countries."

The Trump administration vowed to take the case to the Supreme Court with Attorney General Sessions stating that the court’s ruling blocks Trump’s “efforts to strengthen this country’s national security”.

The courts to date have based their decisions in part on fake news while a liberal attorney at the ACLU said that if Hillary Clinton had put it in place it would be legal. Obama holdover Sally Yates who was acting Attorney General before her firing for not implementing the travel ban was told that the ban was legit but decided to play politics anyways. Leftist judges and their Mainstream Media (MSM) friends are doing all they can to call President Trump a bigot and shut down his travel ban in spite of the majority of Americans agreeing with the President.

The Chief of the liberal judges was clear in his determination that the President was a bigot which apparently is greater than the law:

Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory wrote that the government’s “asserted national security interest … appears to be a post hoc, secondary justification for an executive action rooted in religious animus and intended to bar Muslims from this country.”

In early February we shared a post at the GWP arguing that the President would wait to take the travel ban to the Supreme Court until Justice Gorsuch was in place on the Court. The Supreme Court at the time that the first liberal court stepped in to block the President’s travel ban was made up of four far left liberal judges appointed by Democrat Presidents and four judges appointed by Republican Presidents. If a ruling at the Supreme Court ends in a tie, the lower court’s ruling stands. The President eliminated the probability of this happening by not taking the travel ban to the the Supreme Court until the opening was filled.

If the liberal judges’ position has any merit and the law and legal responsibility of the President to set immigration policies is trumped by their interpretation of things reportedly said or actions taken by the President before or after being President, then why would the liberal judges not take into consideration the President’s meeting with 50 Muslim leaders last week who together with the President stood up against terrorism? Can the court take some prior actions into consideration and not all in basing their ruling on what the law states? If they could take into consideration their interpretation of a President’s prior positions or statements to interpret the immigration law then wouldn’t they have to take all actions into account and wouldn’t the actions last week trump all prior actions?

The liberal judges in the US Courts should be impeached for such one sided, far left rulings, that don’t take the law into consideration but rather are based on their feelings and radical beliefs.

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017...st-travel-ban/

The Judges aren't good Judges. They wrote a 200 page opinion on a 1/2 page Executive Order supported by 2 Federal Laws to ban travel for 90 to 120 days from 6 terrorist-filled countries. That's the bottom-line and all one needs to know to realize that we have lost our Federal Court System.