Fourth Circuit Upholds Injunction Against Trump Travel Ban

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld a nationwide injunction against President Donald Trump’s Revised Executive Order, dated March 6, 2017, banning travel from six Muslim-majority nations.

Maui Now graphic.

The opinion affirmed in part and vacated in part the preliminary injunction awarded by the district court.  According to court documents, the court stated that, “In light of the Supreme Court’s clear warning that such relief should be ordered only in the rarest of circumstances we find that the district court erred in issuing an injunction against the President himself. We therefore lift the injunction as to the President only. The court’s preliminary injunction shall otherwise remain fully intact.”

Hawaiʻi Attorney General Chin responded to the news saying, “Terrorism must be stopped, but not by sacrificing our constitutional principles or denigrating entire classes of people.  Not even the President of the United States is above the US Constitution.”

In today’s Fourth Circuit ruling Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory noted that the text of the revised Executive Order “speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.”

On May 15, 2017, the State of Hawaiʻi argued in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Hawaiʻi federal district court Judge Derrick K. Watson’s order enjoining President Trump’s Executive Order nationwide on grounds that the Executive Order violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Ninth Circuit’s decision in that case, Hawaiʻi v. Trump, is still pending.

US Senator Mazie K. Hirono of Hawaiʻi, who is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also responded to the Fourth Circuit Court’s ruling saying:

“The ruling today by the Fourth Circuit follows earlier decisions like that of Judge Watson in Hawaiʻi in striking a blow against President Trump’s unconstitutional Muslim Ban. The court’s 10-3 opinion is a stirring reminder that we are a county of laws and values. The court was right to focus on evidence that the Trump Administration’s defense of the ban was ‘provided in bad faith as a pretext’ for intolerance. Evidence like the President’s own promises on the campaign trail.”

“The purpose of the Muslim ban has been made clear as day by the people who planned it, wrote it and issued it– to target a minority group for discrimination based on their religion. No amount of furious spinning now can deny President Trump’s own words. Court after court have now rightly applied our Constitution to stop this ban from doing harm to our fundamental American values.”