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Appeals Court Upholds Injunction Blocking Trump's Travel Ban
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Appeals Court Upholds Injunction Blocking Trump's Travel BanPosted:

ProfessorNobody
  • Summer 2019
Status: Offline
Joined: Nov 07, 201211Year Member
Posts: 3,732
Reputation Power: 362
Status: Offline
Joined: Nov 07, 201211Year Member
Posts: 3,732
Reputation Power: 362
A Richmond, Va.-based federal appeals court on Thursday refused to reinstate President Trumps ban on nationals from six majority-Muslim countries from entering the U.S., delivering a major blow to the Trump administration.

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The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 10-3 ruling that Trumps executive order "speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination."

In delivering the opinion of the court, Judge Roger Gregory wrote that Congress granted the president broad power to deny entry to aliens, but that power is not absolute.
It cannot go unchecked when, as here, the President wields it through an executive edict that stands to cause irreparable harm to individuals across this nation, he wrote.

In addition to being discriminatory, the court found that the order would delay and disrupt pending visa applications.

The courts decision keeps a Maryland courts order blocking the ban in place.

The governments appeal of that order was heard by the courts full panel of 13 judges.

Though Judge Stephanie Thacker concurred with the courts decision to keep the stay in place, she said she would have not have considered the remarks Trump made about banning Muslims while on the campaign trail. Those comments took centerstage during oral arguments earlier this month as the judges grappled with whether they should be considered.

While on the campaign trail, a non-incumbent presidential candidate has not yet taken the oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and may speak to a host of promises merely to curry favor with the electorate, she said.

Once a candidate becomes President, however, the Constitution vests that individual with the awesome power of the executive office while simultaneously imposing constraints on that power.

But Gregory said Trumps order cant be separated from the narrative linking it to the animus that inspired it.

In light of this, we find that the reasonable observer would likely conclude that EO-2s primary purpose is to exclude persons from the United States on the basis of their religious beliefs, he wrote.

He said the government has repeatedly asked the court to ignore evidence, circumscribe its own review and blindly defer to executive action, all in the name of the Constitutions separation of powers.

We decline to do so, not only because it is the particular province of the judicial branch to say what the law is, but also because we would do a disservice to our constitutional structure were we to let its mere invocation silence the call for meaningful judicial review, he wrote.

The deference we give the coordinate branches is surely powerful, but even it must yield in certain circumstances, lest we abdicate our own duties to uphold the Constitution.

In a dissenting opinion which Judges Dennis Shedd and Steven Agee joined, Judge Paul Niemeyer said the lower court fabricated a new proposition of law indeed, a new rule that provides for the consideration of campaign statements to recast a later-issued executive order.

The district courts approach is not only unprecedented, it is totally unworkable and inappropriate under any standard of analysis, he said.


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