(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> 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 three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals on Friday declined to issue a ruling sought by the state of Hawaii over President Donald Trump’s so-called "travel ban," saying it didn't have jurisdiction.

Hawaii sought to have grandparents and other relatives exempt from the executive order, which the Supreme Court allowed to partially be implemented in June.

A federal judge in Hawaii on Thursday declined to clarify the high court's order and said Hawaii should have asked the Supreme Court to clarify its order, not the district court. Lawyers for Hawaii appealed, and the appeals court panel on Friday said it lacked jurisdiction to review the district court's order.

The appeals panel said that while district courts could grant relief if the Supreme Court's order was being violated, Hawaii "sought clarification of the Supreme Court's June 26 order, not injunctive relief" and the lower court was not wrong in denying the request.

Trump's executive 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.

The definitions announced by the State Department on June 29 said parents, parents-in-law, spouses, fiancés, children, and children-in-law would be exempt from the ban on visas.

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

Lawyers for Hawaii said that the government was unlawfully excluding foreign nationals.

"Every day that passes is a day when our government is turning away human beings — from newborn children to elderly grandparents — whom the injunction requires to be admitted," the state said in its request to the appeals court.

The Supreme Court in June also agreed to take up government appeal of lower court rulings which had blocked implementation of Trump’s executive order. </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> 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> SEATTLE — Another federal court has ruled against President Donald Trump’s revised executive order limiting travel from six predominately Muslim countries.

The ruling from a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is yet another stinging loss from a court that similarly refused to reinstate Trump’s original executive order on travel in February.

“We conclude that the President, in issuing the Executive Order, exceeded the scope of the authority delegated to him by Congress,” the judges wrote.

The judges largely affirmed a Hawaii judge’s decision from March which found the core provisions of the revised executive order — temporarily blocking all refugees and foreign nationals from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US — likely violated the Constitution because its primary purpose was to disfavor Muslims.

Monday’s ruling will no doubt be appealed to the Supreme Court, which is already considering a similar case from the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia.

After the ruling from US District Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii, Attorney General Jeff Sessions criticized the action, 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.” </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> Government attorneys appealed Thursday, March 30th to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It comes the day after U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson issued a longer-lasting hold on key provisions of Trump’s executive order.

The government says in court documents that the appeal also applies to a temporary order that Watson previously issued that halted the suspension of new visas for people from six Muslim-majority countries and a freeze on the U.S. refugee program.

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin says he expected the government to appeal.

Watson’s written order says he won’t suspend the ruling for an appeal. </s> A U.S. Appeals Court on Monday upheld a lower court ruling that blocks President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travellers from six Muslim-majority countries.

 The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle was the second appeals court to uphold an earlier court’s move to put the executive order on hold while challenges against its constitutionality move forward.

 The Trump administration had appealed to the court over the earlier ruling by a federal judge in Hawaii.

 The court had halted implementation of the entire executive order, which also sought to block issuances of new refugee admissions from around the world for 120 days.

 A separate decision on the order in the Fourth Circuit has already been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A Ninth Circuit Appeals Court panel unanimously upholds the Hawaii district court decision to prevent implementation of revised Executive Order 13780. On May 25, the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court affirmed a similar ruling by the Maryland district court.