A three-judge Appeals Court panel issued a unanimous ruling Thursday afternoon rejecting the Trump administration’s claim of “unreviewable” presidential power and sustaining a judicial order that bars enforcement of Trump’s temporary ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, as well as his temporary ban on the entry of refugees from any country. The unanimous verdict quoted a 75-year-old Supreme Court precedent that said courts have a duty “in time of war as well as in time of peace, to preserve unimpaired the constitutional safeguards of civil liberty.”

The quick decision from a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit could lead to a showdown at the Supreme Court within days, unless the administration dials back the travel ban or agrees to try its case before the federal judge in Seattle who ordered it blocked last week. The three-judge panel found that the district court had the authority to rule on the Executive Order, rejecting the government’s claim that the president has “unreviewable authority to suspend the admission of any class of aliens.” The government was not merely claiming that the political branches should be shown deference by the judiciary on national security issues, they wrote: “Instead, the Government has taken the position that the President’s decisions about immigration policy, particularly when motivated by national security concerns, are unreviewable, even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections.”

They added, in language that underscores the implications of Trump’s actions and his administration’s legal argument: “There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.”

The ruling cited a series of Supreme Court decisions striking down actions taken by the federal government and justified in the name of “national security.” These include the 2008 Boumediene decision, in which the court found, over the objections of the Bush administration, that prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay had the right to seek a writ of habeas corpus and gain judicial review of their continued detention . Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Bob Ferguson: Travel ban was adopted with "little thought, little planning, little oversight"

The ruling means that people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen with visas can continue to enter the US, and refugees from around the world, who were also subject to a temporary ban, are no longer blocked either. The judges found that the plaintiffs in the case -- the states of Washington and Minnesota -- showed that the ban may have violated the due process rights of foreigners who had valid visas and green cards, as well as those in the country illegally. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is weighing the appeal of President Trump's executive order on immigration, is the federal appeals court conservatives have long ridiculed as the “nutty 9th” or the “9th Circus.”

Covering a huge swath of territory — nine western states plus Guam — the San Francisco-based court handles far more cases than any other federal appeals court, including some rulings that have invoked furor from conservatives over the years. Opponents of the travel ban, led by Washington state and Minnesota and including nearly 20 other states, former national security officials and leading technology companies, say the ban discriminates against citizens of certain countries and the Muslim religion. Even Trump’s own nominee to the Supreme Court, Gorsuch, voiced opposition to Trump’s tweets lambasting the “so-called judge” and suggesting the appeals court hearing Tuesday was “disgraceful.” Gorsuch is himself an appeals court judge, on the Tenth Circuit, and he told a Democratic senator that such attacks on judges were “disheartening” and “demoralizing.”

The intensity of the political conflict, within three weeks of Trump’s inauguration, is reflected in the language of the Appeals Court decision, which systematically eviscerated the arguments made by the Trump administration in legal briefs and in the course of an hour-long oral argument Tuesday.
The appeal of the Trump administration is denied as the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals said it would not block a lower-court ruling that brought the president's executive order to a halt.