(CN) – The Ninth Circuit on Monday became the second federal appeals court to uphold a stay of President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban, even as he presses the Supreme Court to reinstate it.

Monday’s decision follows a May 25 ruling by the Fourth Circuit that concluded Trump intended to discriminate against Muslims from the six countries he targeted in his executive order.

The administration on June 1 asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let the ban take effect while the justices decide whether to review the Fourth Circuit ruling.

The three-judge Ninth Circuit panel ruled that Trump exceeded the scope of his authority in issuing the revised travel ban and largely upheld a ruling in Hawaii federal court that prevented the implementation of a ban on all travelers from six Muslim-majority countries.

“Immigration, even for the President, is not a one-person show,” the 86-page opinion states. “The President must make a sufficient finding that the entry of these classes of people would be ‘detrimental to the interests of the United States.’”

The ruling marks the second defeat for the Trump administration in the Ninth Circuit, with both decisions focusing on the presence of unconstitutional religious discrimination against Muslims embedded in each executive order. The first one was issued a week after Trump assumed office and a second, revised travel ban came in early March.

In the first case, the state of Washington sued the Trump administration, saying the ban was a thinly veiled attempt at harming Muslims. U.S. District Court Judge James Robart granted Washington a temporary restraining order, preventing implementation of the ban. The Ninth Circuit refused in February to reinstate the first travel ban.

Rather than appealing, the Trump administration revised the travel ban in a new executive order issued March 6.

This time around, Hawaii sued and U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson granted a temporary restraining order for similar reasons.

After Watson’s ruling, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions criticized it by saying he was “amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power.”

Monday’s Ninth Circuit ruling will most likely be appealed to the Supreme Court, which is already weighing whether to take up the Fourth Circuit appeal. </s> May 25 (Reuters) - The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia on Thursday refused to reinstate President Donald Trump's temporary travel ban for six Muslim-majority nations, in another legal blow to the White House.

A majority of judges on the appeals court, in a 10-3 decision, said they were "unconvinced" the travel order had more to do with national security concerns than a "Muslim ban."

The court also found the challengers were likely to suffer "irreparable harm" if the ban were implemented and that it might violate the U.S. Constitution.

The appeals court maintained the injunction against the travel ban in full.

The appeals court was reviewing a March ruling by a Maryland-based federal judge that blocked part of Trump's March 6 executive order barring travelers from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the government put in place stricter visa screening.

A similar ruling against Trump's policy from a Hawaii-based federal judge is still in place and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals court is reviewing that decision. (Reporting by Mica Rosenberg, Dan Levine and Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Chris Reese and Tom Brown) </s> A federal judge in Hawaii has rejected a motion filed by that state seeking to limit the scope of President Donald Trump's so-called travel ban, parts of which were cleared to be implemented by the U.S. Supreme Court.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson said in a ruling Thursday in Honolulu that the Supreme Court is the proper venue to deal with the issue.

Hawaii argued that the government's plan for enforcing the executive order wrongly excluded grandparents and other relatives from the list of close family members who would still be able to get visas to travel to the United States during the 90 days while the executive order is in force. Government lawyers argued against broadening exceptions, as sought by Hawaii and others.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 26 that the administration could begin enforcing part the executive order until it makes a final ruling. The high court also agreed to take up the government's appeal of lower-court rulings which had blocked implementation of Trump's executive order.

"Because Plaintiffs seek clarification of the June 26, 2017 injunction modifications authored by the Supreme Court, clarification should be sought there, not here," Watson wrote in Thursday's ruling.

Hawaii was one of the federal courts that blocked implementation of the travel order, which would limit for 90 days entry to the United States of those from six predominantly Muslim nations.

Critics claim that Trump's executive order is a "Muslim ban." Trump has claimed that the order is to protect Americans from terrorism.

Trump issued a second, revised order after the first one was blocked by a federal judge in Seattle and after the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals refused to reinstate it.

The revised order calls for a 90-day ban on issuing visas to citizens of Iran, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen who want to come to the U.S. But unlike the first executive order, this one does not apply to anyone who has already obtained a valid visa.

Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews and siblings-in-law would be subject to the ban.

The executive order also imposes a 120-day ban on refugees who have no "bona fide relationship" with an entity or person in the United States. </s> Given the president’s (and his allies’) serial bashing of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as a godless liberal bastion of judicial activism, it probably raised few eyebrows that a three-judge panel of that Court unanimously upheld a Hawaii federal district judge’s injunction against enforcement of Trump’s revised travel ban on Monday.

But the Ninth Circuit decision differed in two significant ways from the Fourth Circuit’s superficially similar ruling on May 25. The judges did not choose to maintain an injunction against the ban on the First Amendment Establishment Clause grounds emphasized by the Fourth Circuit — an argument that puts heavy emphasis in a controversial way on Team Trump’s comments about a “Muslim ban” before the election. Instead, they opted to focus on the claim that the administration did not make the sort of factual findings about national security threats allegedly posed by the people affected that the congressional statute authorizing such actions requires.

Perhaps even more important for purposes of the ultimate disposal of this case, the Ninth Circuit struck down the district court judge’s injunction against internal government operations associated with a permanent regime of enhanced vetting. Since the decisions in the Fourth Circuit did not touch on this issue, the administration is presumably empowered to move ahead on that front based on the Ninth Circuit decision.

So, at this point, the Supreme Court can choose between punting and basically telling the administration to forget about what was supposed to be a temporary travel ban, or deciding the case on one or both of the complicated issues cited by the Fourth and Ninth Circuits. Either way, the underlying fight over the president’s desire to crack down on people coming into the country who happen to be Muslims will go on, in the courts and elsewhere. </s> A federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, has declined to re-instate President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting travel from six predominantly Muslim countries for three months.

In a ruling Thursday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said the order did amount to a Muslim ban: “Laid bare, this Executive Order is no more than what the President promised before and after his election: naked invidious discrimination against Muslims,” the appeals court judges said in their 205-page ruling.

The panel of 13 judges ruling in the case cited Trump’s tweets, television interviews and statements posted on his campaign website as evidence of his intent.

The panel heard arguments in the case in early May. An attorney for the government had argued that the Trump administration's second attempt to curb travelers and immigrants from some majority-Muslim countries had nothing to do with religion.

In March, a federal judge in Maryland blocked the travel ban, which itself was a revised version of one initially issued in January that was tweaked after encountering legal roadblocks. The appeals court judges did not think the second version was an improvement: “Significantly, in revising the order, the executive branch did not attempt to walk away from its previous discriminatory order. Instead, it simply attempted to effectuate the same discrimination through a slightly different vehicle -- the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

The Trump administration’s next recourse is to take the case to the Supreme Court. Appeals court documents say the administration has 90 days to do file an appeal.

A second appeals court, the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, is also considering an appeal of a stay against the travel order, this one issued by a judge in Hawaii. But any ruling from that court has been rendered moot by Thursday’s Fourth Circuit ruling. </s> A defiant Donald Trump has pledged to appeal against a federal judge’s order placing an immediate halt on his revised travel ban, describing the ruling as judicial overreach that made the United States look weak.

In granting the temporary restraining order in response to a lawsuit by the state of Hawaii, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson found on Wednesday that “a reasonable, objective observer ... would conclude that the executive order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion.”

Early on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang issued a nationwide preliminary injunction in a similar case in Maryland brought by refugee resettlement agencies represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center.

Chuang ruled that the agencies were likely to succeed in proving that the travel ban portion of the executive order was intended to be a ban on Muslims and, as a result, violates the U.S. Constitution’s religious freedom protection.

Explainer: Trump’s immigration ban, Part II: What we know so far

“To avoid sowing seeds of division in our nation, upholding this fundamental constitutional principle at the core of our nation’s identity plainly serves a significant public interest,” Chuang wrote in his ruling.

The actions were the latest legal blow to the administration’s efforts to temporarily ban refugees as well as travelers from six predominantly Muslim countries. The president has said the ban is needed for national security.

However, the orders, while a victory for the plaintiffs, are only a first step and the government could ultimately win its underlying case. Watson and Chuang were appointed to the bench by former Democratic President Barack Obama.

Trump, speaking after the Hawaii ruling at a rally in Nashville, called his revised executive order a “watered-down version” of his first.

The president said he would take the case “as far as it needs to go,” including to the Supreme Court, in order to get a ruling that the ban is legal.

The likely next stop if the administration decides to contest the Hawaii judge’s ruling would be the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Three judges on the Ninth Circuit upheld a restraining order on the first travel ban issued by a Washington state judge.

At that point, the government’s legal options were to ask for a hearing by a larger panel of judges or petition the Supreme Court to hear the case. Instead, the administration withdrew the ban, promising to retool it in ways that would address the legal issues.

If the Ninth Circuit were to uphold the Hawaii court’s ruling, an appeal to the Supreme Court would be complicated by its current makeup of four conservative and four liberal judges, with no ninth justice since the death of Antonin Scalia more than a year ago.

The travel ban has deeply divided the country on liberal and conservative lines, and it is unlikely that a ninth Supreme Court justice would be seated in time to hear an appeal in this case.

Trump signed the new ban on March 6 in a bid to overcome legal problems with his January executive order, which caused chaos at airports and sparked mass protests before a Washington judge stopped its enforcement in February.

Watson’s order is only temporary until the broader arguments in the case can be heard. He set an expedited hearing schedule to determine if his ruling should be extended.

Trump’s first travel order was more sweeping than the second revised order. Like the current one, it barred citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days, but it also included Iraq, which was subsequently taken off the list.

The revised ban also excluded legal permanent residents and existing visa holders and provided waivers for various categories of immigrants with ties to the United States.

Hawaii and other opponents of the ban claimed that the motivation behind it was Trump’s campaign promise of “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

In Washington state, a group of plaintiffs applying for immigrant visas asked U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle - who suspended the first ban - to stop the new order. Robart was appointed to the bench by Republican former President George W. Bush.

Judge Robart said he would issue a written ruling, but did not specify a time line. </s> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Friday asked the Supreme Court to block a judge’s ruling that prevented President Donald Trump’s travel ban from being applied to grandparents of U.S. citizens and refugees already being processed by resettlement agencies.

FILE PHOTO: International passengers embrace family members as they arrive at Washington Dulles International Airport after the Trump administration's travel ban was allowed back into effect pending further judicial review, in Dulles, Virginia, U.S., June 29, 2017. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan

In a court filing, the administration asked the justices to overturn Thursday’s decision by a U.S. district judge in Hawaii, which limited the scope of the administration’s temporary ban on refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries.

The latest round in the fight over Trump’s March 6 executive order, which he says is needed for national security reasons, came after the Supreme Court intervened last month to partially revive the two bans, which were blocked by lower courts.

The Supreme Court said then that the ban could take effect, but that people with a “bona fide relationship” to a U.S. person or entity could not be barred.

The administration had narrowly interpreted that language, saying the ban would apply to grandparents and other family members, prompting the state of Hawaii to ask Hawaii-based U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson to expand the definition of who could be admitted. He ruled for the state late on Thursday.

In the court filing, the Justice Department said the judge’s ruling “empties the (Supreme) Court’s decision of meaning, as it encompasses not just “close” family members but virtually all family members.

The conservative-leaning Supreme Court is not currently in session but the justices can handle emergency requests. The administration’s application could be directed either to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has responsibility for emergency requests from western states, or to the nine justices as a whole. If the court as a whole is asked to weigh in, five votes are needed to grant such a request.

“The truth here is that the government’s interpretation of the Supreme Court’s stay order defies common sense,” said Omar Jadwat, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union involved in challenging the ban. “That’s what the district court correctly found and the attorney general’s misleading attacks on its decision can’t change that fact.”

In his decision, Watson harshly criticized the government’s definition of close family relations as “the antithesis of common sense.”

Watson also ruled that the assurance by a resettlement agency to provide basic services to a newly arrived refugee constitutes an adequate connection to the United States because it is a sufficiently formal and documented agreement that triggers responsibilities and compensation.

In the court filing, the Justice Department said Watson’s ruling on refugees would make the Supreme Court’s decision on that part of the executive order “effectively meaningless.”

The ruling, if left in place, means refugees can continue to be resettled in the United States, beyond a cap of 50,000 set by the executive order. That limit was reached this week.

The Supreme Court’s decision last month revived parts of Trump’s March 6 executive order banning travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, as well as refugees for 120 days. The court also agreed to hear oral arguments in the fall over whether the ban violates the U.S. Constitution. </s> WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Friday that the Justice Department will ask the Supreme Court to block a judge's ruling that prevented President Donald Trump's travel ban from being applied to grandparents of U.S. citizens and refugees already being processed by resettlement agencies.

Sessions said in a statement that the administration would "reluctantly return directly to the Supreme Court" in a bid to overturn Thursday's decision by a U.S. district judge in Hawaii, which limited the scope of the administration's temporary ban on refugees and travelers from six Muslim-majority countries. The Justice Department could file papers with the high court as soon as Friday.

"By this decision, the district court has improperly substituted its policy preferences for the national security judgments of the executive branch in a time of grave threats, defying both the lawful prerogatives of the executive branch and the directive of the Supreme Court," Sessions Said.

The Supreme Court last month said the ban could take effect, but that people with a "bona fide relationship" to a U.S. person or entity could not be barred.

The administration had narrowly interpreted that language, saying the ban would apply to grandparents and other family members, prompting the state of Hawaii to ask Hawaii-based U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson to expand the definition of who could be admitted.

"The truth here is that the government´s interpretation of the Supreme Court´s stay order defies common sense," said Omar Jadwat, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union involved in challenging the ban. "That´s what the district court correctly found, and the attorney general´s misleading attacks on its decision can´t change that fact."

The conservative-leaning Supreme Court is not currently in session, but the justices can handle emergency requests. The administration's application could be directed either to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has responsibility for emergency requests from western states, or to the nine justices as a whole. If the court as a whole is asked to weigh in, five votes are needed to grant such a request.

Separately, the Justice Department filed papers in Hawaii federal court saying it would appeal Watson's ruling to the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That would give the government a second route to the Supreme Court.

Earlier on Friday, White House homeland security adviser Tom Bossert told reporters that the ruling appeared to be "fairly broad and something that would trouble me if it was as broad as reported."

Bossert, speaking aboard Air Force One as the president returned from a trip to Paris, focused his remarks on the part of the ruling that would allow more refugees to enter the country, saying the ruling could be interpreted as "so expansive as to cover every refugee."

In his decision, Watson harshly criticized the government's definition of close family relations as "the antithesis of common sense."

Watson also ruled that the assurance by a resettlement agency to provide basic services to a newly arrived refugee constitutes an adequate connection to the United States because it is a sufficiently formal and documented agreement that triggers responsibilities and compensation.

The ruling, if left in place, means refugees can continue to be resettled in the United States, beyond a cap of 50,000 set by the executive order. That limit was reached this week.

The Supreme Court's decision last month revived parts of Trump's March 6 executive order banning travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, as well as refugees for 120 days. The court also agreed to hear oral arguments in the fall over whether the ban violates the U.S. Constitution. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe, Yeganeh Torbati and Dan Levine; Editing by Jonathan Oatis) </s> A federal appeals court Thursday upheld one of two bans on enforcing President Donald Trump's executive order restricting travel from six predominately Muslim countries.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, Virginia, voted 10-3 to uphold a ruling by a federal judge in Maryland who declared in March that the president's revised travel order amounted to unconstitutional religious discrimination.

Campaign statements by Donald Trump, who originally called for a ban on Muslim immigration, "provide direct, specific evidence" of what motivated his executive orders — "President Trump's desire to exclude Muslims from the United States," the appeals court said.

The revised executive order "cannot be divorced from the cohesive narrative linking it to the animus that inspired it," the court said in an opinion written by Chief Judge Roger Gregory.

The Justice Department urged the court to lift the ban on enforcement. It said the executive order had a legitimate national security purpose, allowing the government to assess the reliability of background information on visa applicants from six countries associated with terrorism.

But that argument, the court said, "is belied by evidence in the record that President Trump issued the first executive order without consulting with the relevant security agencies."

After President Trump's first executive order was blocked in court, the president signed the second one, imposing a 90-day ban on travel from Iran, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.

Judge Paul Niemeyer, writing in dissent for himself and Judges Dennis Shedd and Steven Agee, said the majority wrongly gave itself the power to "search for evidence suggesting bad faith."

As for the government's claim that the president acted to protect national security, the dissenters said "none of the facts or conditions recited as reasons for the issuance of the executive order have been challenged as untrue or illegitimate."

In addition to the Maryland judge's ruling, the subject of Thursday's appeals court ruling, the executive order was also blocked by a federal judge in Hawaii. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments May 15 on the government's efforts to lift that stay.

Both appeals courts would have to rule in the administration's favor to allow enforcement of the revised executive order. An appeal to the US Supreme Court seems certain, but it is unlikely the justices would hear the case before the fall.

Neither the White House nor the Justice Department had an immediate response to the appeals court ruling.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing a group of refugee aid organizations and Muslim residents whose overseas relatives are seeking visas, declared victory on Twitter after the announcement, saying, "We won in 4th circuit Muslim ban case!"
The Department of Justice asks the Supreme Court for expedited review of the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court's May 25 ruling that affirmed the Maryland district court decision to prevent implementation of revised Executive Order 13780, and let the travel ban take effect. The Appeals Court of the Ninth Circuit has not announced its decision on a similar ruling from Hawaii.