Donald Trump listens to a question during a town hall event at Rochester Recreational Arena in Rochester, New Hampshire. September 17, 2015
Photo by Darren McCollester/Getty Images
In a 10-3 decision, the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling that blocked President Donald Trump's travel ban, which prevented residents of six Muslim majority nations from entering the United States. The Supreme Court is widely expected to take up the case this fall
Chief Judge Gregory wrote in the majority ruling that the ban "in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination... Congress granted the President broad power to deny entry to aliens, but that power is not absolute. It cannot go unchecked when, as here, the President wields it through an executive edict that stands to cause irreparable harm to individuals across this nation."
Trump's revised ban was signed by executive order in March, but was blocked by a federal court before it went into effect. Travellers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen were to be blocked from entering the US for 90 days, with refugees stopped for 120 days.
Omar Jadwat, the director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project who argued the case, issued a statement: “President Trump’s Muslim ban violates the Constitution, as this decision strongly reaffirms. The Constitution’s prohibition on actions disfavoring or condemning any religion is a fundamental protection for all of us, and we can all be glad that the court today rejected the government’s request to set that principle aside.”