Trump travel ban blocked; fight headed for the Supreme Court

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban “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.

In a 10-3 vote, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said the ban likely violates the Constitution. And it upheld a lower court ruling that blocks the Republican administration from cutting off visas for people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Trump’s administration vowed to take the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Richmond, Va.-based 4th Circuit is the first appeals court to rule on the revised travel ban unveiled in March.

A second appeals court, the 9th U.S. Circuit based in San Francisco, is also weighing the revised travel ban after a federal judge in Hawaii blocked it.

White House spokesman Michael Short said the administration was confident that its order is legal.

The Supreme Court almost certainly would step into the case if asked.

The justices almost always have the final say when a lower court strikes down a federal law or presidential action.

A central question in the case before the 4th Circuit was whether courts should consider Trump’s public statements about wanting to bar Muslims from entering the country as evidence that the policy was primarily motivated by the religion.

Trump’s administration argued the court should not look beyond the text of the executive order, which doesn’t mention religion. The countries were not chosen because they are predominantly Muslim but because they present terrorism risks, the administration said.

But 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.”