Appeals Court Rejects Emergency Stay Motion To Reinstate Trump’s Immigration Ban

San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Sunday refused to issue an emergency stay against the temporary restraining order issued on Friday by U.S. District Court Judge James Robart, against the enforcement of President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order banning entry to the US from seven majority-Muslim countries.

“The injunction immediately harms the public by thwarting enforcement of an Executive Order issued by the President, based on his national security judgment… As the President acted well within both statutory and constitutional authorization, the relief irreparably harms our system of government by contravening the Constitution’s separation of powers,” the emergency stay motion signed by acting Solicitor General Noel Francisco and acting Civil Division Chief Chad Readler reportedly stated.

The Justice Department lawyers argued that the District Court Judge had overstepped his bounds by substituting his judgment for Trump’s, about the nature of the security threat posed by travelers from the seven affected countries. The filing further argued that the States lacked locus standi to bring the suit because they're not directly affected by the President’s order.

The Justice Department had filed the motion challenging an order issued by a Federal Judge in Seattle on Friday, granting a temporary restraining order against the travel ban.

 “The narrow question the court is asked to consider today is whether it is appropriate to enter a TRO against certain actions taken by the Executive in the context of this specific lawsuit. Although the question is narrow, the court is mindful of the considerable impact its order may have on the parties before it, the executive branch of our government, and the country’s citizens and residents. The court concludes that the circumstances brought before it today are such that it must intervene to fulfill its constitutional role in our tripart government. Accordingly, the court concludes that entry of the above-described TRO is necessary, and the States’ motion is therefore GRANTED,” U.S. District Judge James Robart had ruled.

The Court had opined that the States had met their burden of demonstrating that they face immediate and irreparable injury as a result of the signing and implementation of the Executive Order. “The Executive Order adversely affects the States’ residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations, and freedom to travel. These harms extend to the States by virtue of their roles as parens patriae of the residents living within their borders. In addition, the States themselves are harmed by virtue of the damage that implementation of the Executive Order has inflicted upon the operations and missions of their public universities and other institutions of higher learning, as well as injury to the States’ operations, tax bases, and public funds. These harms are significant and ongoing,” the Court had further observed.

The Judge had refused to limit the order to the States at issue, observing that the resulting partial implementation of the Executive Order “would undermine the constitutional imperative of a ‘uniform Rule of Naturalization’ and Congress’s instruction that ‘the immigration laws of the United States should be enforced vigorously and uniformly.”

Read the Federal Judge's stay order here