Federal judges ask if revised travel ban discriminates against Muslims

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is again hearing arguments about President Donald Trump's so-called "travel ban", focusing Monday on campaign promises the then-GOP candidate made to bar Muslims from entering the United States. The lawyer for the state of Hawaii, which brought this case, says the order is essentially that Muslim ban that President Trump and his advisers have talked about. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Ap.

"No one has ever attempted to set aside a law that is neutral on its face and neutral in its operation on the basis of largely campaign trail comments made by a private citizen running for office", argued Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, who is defending Trump's travel ban and explaining why it is legal and should go into effect.

Trump's revised travel ban, Wall said, withstands the Mandel test because it was signed with the country's national-security interests in mind.

"Does that mean the president is forever barred from issuing an executive order along those lines?"

But Judge Michael Daly Hawkins asked Wall whether Trump had even bothered to disavow his inflammatory rhetoric against Muslims.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised a "total and complete shutdown" of Muslims entering the United States.

Wall insisted before the 9th Circuit that there's nothing religious about Trump's executive order and that, in any event, the order was a "policy judgment" that he exercised as president relying on broad authority given to him by Congress.

Ruling otherwise, on the other hand, will mean, "you defer to the president in a way history teaches us is very risky. You'd open the door to so much".

"The benefit of that standard.it doesn't call on courts to make these sorts of determinations - the second-guessing of national security determinations that they're sort of ill-equipped to do", Wall said.

A federal appeals court is peppering a lawyer for President Donald Trump about whether his travel ban discriminates against Muslims.

This is the second time the 9th Circuit has been tasked with deciding the immediate fate of the President's travel ban.

In February, a federal judge in Seattle halted the original travel ban nationwide, and a three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit declined to reinstate it - unanimously unpersuaded by the Trump administration's national security arguments and doubting travelers had been given adequate "due process", such as "notice and a hearing prior to restricting an individual's ability to travel".

Last week, judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, heard arguments over whether to affirm a Maryland judge's decision putting the ban on ice. The controversial order, however, could be decided by the Supreme Court. And they will probably move more slowly because that case was heard by 13 judges appointed by administrations both Republican and Democratic. "What does he have to do to issue an executive order that, in your view, might pass constitutional muster?"

"No, Judge Paez", Wall immediately responded. "I want to be very clear about this". "If it were, I would not be standing here, and the United States would not be defending it".

Holding signs that said 'No wall. "And we respectfully submit that this court shouldn't treat it like one. It ought to leave this debate where it belong, its in the political arena".

In Washington, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said at a news briefing that the executive order is "fully lawful and will be upheld".

Because the Ninth Circuit heard the case before a three-judge panel, and not the full membership of the court as the Fourth Circuit Court had done, it seems likely that the Fourth Circuit case might move more quickly to the Supreme Court. The statement was removed just before arguments before a different federal appeals court last week.

"We don't know what the result is going to be, but what I see happening in this process is that the system is working", said Hawaii's Attorney General Doug Chin following the hearing. "The real question, though, isn't the timing, but whether the two courts come out the same way".