Travel banTrump's travel ban “unconstitutionally tainted with animus toward Islam”: Court

Published 16 February 2018

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, on Thursday described the latest version of Donald Trump’s travel ban as “unconstitutionally tainted with animus toward Islam.” In a 9-4 vote, the federal appeals court said the ban on travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries is unconstitutional because it discriminates against people based on their religion. In its ruling, the 4th Circuit said the presidential proclamation imposing the ban has a “much broader deleterious effect” than banning certain foreign nationals. The ban, the court said, “denies the possibility of a complete, intact family to tens of thousands of Americans.” “On a fundamental level, the Proclamation second-guesses our nation’s dedication to religious freedom and tolerance,” Chief Justice Roger Gregory wrote for the court in the majority opinion.

The 4th U.S. circuit court of appeals in Richmond, Virginia, on Thursday described the latest version of Donald Trump’s travel ban as “unconstitutionally tainted with animus toward Islam.”

The case is heading to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a 9-4 vote, the federal appeals court said the ban on travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries is unconstitutional because it discriminates against people based on their religion. The court said it examined statements made by Trump and other administration officials, as well as the ban itself, and concluded that it was “unconstitutionally tainted with animus toward Islam.”

In its ruling, the 4th Circuit said the presidential proclamation imposing the ban has a “much broader deleterious effect” than banning certain foreign nationals. The ban, the court said, “denies the possibility of a complete, intact family to tens of thousands of Americans.”

“On a fundamental level, the Proclamation second-guesses our nation’s dedication to religious freedom and tolerance,” Chief Justice Roger Gregory wrote for the court in the majority opinion.

The ban “second-guesses our nation’s dedication to religious freedom and tolerance,” the court said.

The Guardian notes that the court upheld a ruling by a federal judge in Maryland who issued an injunction barring enforcement of the ban against people from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen who have bona fide relationships with people in the United States.

The U.S. Supreme Court has already agreed to hear the travel ban case in April. In December, the high court said the ban could be enforced while appeals made their way through the courts.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Paul Niemeyer said the 4th Circuit’s ruling was an attempt to “second-guess U.S. foreign policy, in particular, the president’s discretionary decisions on immigration, implicating matters of national security.”

Niemeyer said the majority should have based its decision on the text of the presidential proclamation alone and not considered statements Trump made on the campaign trial and after he became president.

“At bottom, the danger of this new rule is that it will enable a court to justify its decision to strike down any executive action with which it disagrees. It need only find one statement that contradicts the official reasons given for a subsequent executive action and thereby pronounce that the official reasons were a pretext,” Niemeyer wrote.

The New York Times notes that the ruling was the second time the fourth circuit has rejected a travel ban. In May, the court cited Trump’s remarks on Muslim travelers while rejecting an earlier version of the ban, finding it “drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination.”

A federal judge in Seattle blocked the first version of the travel ban, which was announced shortly after Trump took office. Different courts have since grappled with different versions of the ban, rewritten in irder to comply with the criticisms of these different courts.

The version rejected by the 4th court of appeals blocks some travelers from the six countries, allowing for students from some of the countries, blocking other business travelers and tourists, while and allowing for admissions on a case-by-case basis.