A Second Appeals Court Blocks Trump Travel Ban

(Cartoon image about Trump travel ban is by John Darkow in the Columbia Daily Tribune.)

A couple of weeks ago, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to lift the blockage of Trump's travel ban by a lower court. They ruled that Trump's travel ban violated the Constitution's First Amendment by targeting a religious groups (muslims).

Now a second appeals court has done the same thing -- upheld the blockage of Trump's travel ban by a lower court. What's interesting is that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found a different reason to continue blocking the travel ban. They ruled that Trump had exceeded his authority, because his travel ban violated the provisions of the immigration act passed by Congress.

Immigrations law says the president cannot suspend the immigration rules without first justifying the need to do that -- that he must first prove that the people in the nations banned provide a substantial risk to the people of the United States before unilaterally changing the immigration rules. The Court ruled that Trump had not proved that, and therefore could not change the law with an executive order.

The Trump administration will probably appeal this decision to the Supreme Court -- as they did the decision of the Fourth Circuit Court. But because this decision was based on immigration law, and not a First Amendment violation, it will need to be considered separately. A Supreme Court decision overturning one of these decisions would not apply to the other.

This makes it a little harder for the Trump administration to get their bigoted and silly travel ban.