Tag: travel ban

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Trump’s travel ban is moot

The White House needs a travel ban why?

On March 6, the president issued an executive order that banned travelers to the United States from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the government reviewed procedures for vetting visitors from those countries.

Though at least 13 federal courts have blocked the order on constitutional and statutory grounds, the Ninth Circuit ruled in June that the president can proceed with a review to determine what additional procedures, if any, might be needed from the countries subject to the ban that would address security concerns.

Still, the administration has asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the ban and to review decisions by both the Ninth and Fourth Circuits that nullify “a national-security directive of the president,” as Jeffrey Wall, the acting solicitor general, wrote in a brief filed last Wednesday.

Even if the court reviews the executive order, the justices won’t hear arguments in the case until October at the earliest. Which means the administration has at least four months to carry out its review. So review away.

The travel ban will remain blocked, but the White House has cited no reason not to assess the threat. If security is at stake, there’s seemingly no reason to delay. Of course, the White House has cited no evidence that would suggest a threat that Congress didn’t address when it tightened visa procedures 18 months ago.

The State of Hawaii, which challenged the travel ban in the Ninth Circuit, contends as much. “Indeed, there is no need for the court to grant review at all,” the state wrote in its latest brief, noting that by October, “the government will have had almost nine months to complete the review and upgrade of immigration procedures that the order was allegedly designed to accomplish.”

The administration’s actions suggest the travel ban may be motivated less by keeping the nation safe than by keeping the president’s supporters stirring. If so, that’s a political calculation, which the justices don’t review anyway.

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Ninth Circuit misread the law governing the Trump travel ban, government tells Supreme Court

The Ninth Circuit misread the law that underpins the president’s exclusion of visitors to the United States from six majority-Muslim countries, the government argues in a new round of papers that ask the Supreme Court to reinstate the travel ban.

The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) requires only that the president find entry of a group of visitors to the U.S. would be detrimental to the nation’s interests, regardless of whether Congress comes to the same conclusion, says the government in a brief filed on Thursday. Thus, the appeals court erred when it ruled on June 12 that the travel ban has no basis in the record and therefore exceeds the president’s authority, the government says.

“The court of appeals read into that provision a requirement that, before suspending entry, the president must articulate a factual finding — satisfactory to courts — that support[s] the conclusion that entry of all nationals whose entry he suspends would be harmful to the national interest,” writes the government. “That requirement turns the statute’s text on its head.” [internal quotes omitted]

In its ruling, the Ninth Circuit noted that the executive order containing the ban does not discuss any instances of terrorism in the U.S. by citizens of Iran, Libya, Sudan, Syria or Yemen — an omission the State of Hawaii and others challenging the ban raised before the appeals court and are likely to assert in their brief, which is due this Tuesday. The executive order cites one example of domestic terrorism by a native of Somalia who came to the U.S. at the age of 2.

Uncertainty alone justifies a ban, White House says

Besides relying on a series of State Department reports from 2016, the administration cited no evidence to support its assertion of a threat to national security posed by residents of the six countries. The omission explains in part why the challengers say the reasons for the ban offered by the White House are a pretext to disfavor Islam in violation of the Establishment Clause.

In its brief to the court, the government says the president imposed the travel ban “in the face of uncertainty over whether these foreign governments that sponsor or shelter terrorism are able and willing to provide” information that would allow the Departments of State and Homeland Security to determine whether entry of visitors from those countries constitutes a threat.

The uncertainty alone justifies a halt for three months on visitors while the administration ascertains whether each of the countries can screen travelers sufficiently, says the government.

The administration also urges the justices to overrule a finding by the Ninth Circuit that the travel bank violate the INA’s prohibition on discrimination based on nationality in the issuance of visas. That bar does not apply to the president’s ability to restrict entry of visitors, the government contends.

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Trump travel ban appeal is moot, challengers say

The fate of President Trump’s prohibition on visitors to the U.S. from six majority-Muslim countries may turn on whether the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case at all.

The period of 90 days for the so-called travel ban that took effect in March has expired, the challengers contend in papers filed this week with the court. Thus, the matter is moot, say the challengers, who add it would be premature for the justices to weigh in until the lower courts have resolved the matter on the merits.

Hearing the appeal “would effectively grant the government a victory on the merits,” the State of Hawaii writes in its brief. “Absent the injunction [from the lower courts], the government will have imposed the full travel ban and most of the refugee ban before the October Term begins.”

The Fourth Circuit ruled last month that the travel ban likely violates the Establishment Clause, based on statements by the president that he aimed to keep Muslims out of the U.S. The Ninth Circuit held last week that the president has failed to supply evidence of a threat to national security sufficient to justify the exclusion of 180 million people based on their nationality.

According to Hawaii, the Fourth Circuit correctly considered statements by candidate Trump describing Muslim refugees as a threat in determining “that the stated [national security] rationale is a sham.”

To conclude otherwise would be to authorize presidents to enact policies intended to further unconstitutional aims “by cloaking the policy in neutral terms and a national security rationale,” says Hawaii. “That is not the law.”

The parties have until Wednesday to file briefs addressing the Ninth Circuit’s ruling

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A second federal appeals court rejects Trump’s travel ban

A second federal appeals court has refused to reinstate President Trump’s travel ban after concluding that the prohibition exceeds the scope of his authority.

To justify a ban on visitors to the United States for 90 days from six predominantly Muslim countries, the president by law must find that entry of those visitors would harm the interests of the U.S., a conclusion that has no basis in the record put forward by the White House, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit said in an 86-page ruling published on Monday.

The decision offers a different basis for rejecting the ban than one relied on by the Fourth Circuit, which found that the ban disfavors Islam in violation of the Establishment Clause. The government has appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court. (The challengers’ briefs are due today.)

The executive order that enshrines the travel ban does not discuss any instances of terrorism in the U.S. by citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan or Yemen, the Ninth Circuit ruled. (The order cites one example of domestic terrorism by a native of Somalia who came to the U.S. as a child.)

“The order does not offer a sufficient justification to suspend the entry of more than 180 million people on the basis of nationality,” the panel wrote. “National security is not a ‘talismanic incantation’ that, once invoked, can support any and all exercise of executive power under [the Immigration and Nationality Act].” (citation omitted)

Nor, the judges said, does the order include a finding by the president that procedures currently in place for screening visa applicants is inadequate. The ban also contravenes a provision in the immigration law that prohibits discrimination in the issuance of visas, the court said.

The Ninth Circuit narrowed an injunction by a district judge in Hawaii in a way that may offer the Supreme Court an out should the justices want to avoid ruling on the ban’s constitutionality. The panel permitted the administration to proceed with a review of vetting procedures to determine what additional information, if any, is needed from the countries subject to the ban that would allow the government to determine whether to issue a visa.

That leaves the possibility the administration would revise the procedures and dispense with the need for a moratorium on issuing visas, a conclusion that could render the appeal moot. Of course, whatever rationale the White House were to cite for revising the vetting procedures would need to be grounded in national security and not merely be a pretext for banning Muslims, which would subject the revised procedures to continued constitutional challenges.

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Trump’s tweets can (and will) be used in court

After President Trump took to Twitter on Monday to defend the merits of his “travel ban” (his words) on visitors to the U.S. from six predominantly Muslim countries, a series of surrogates stepped forward to try to undo the damage to the administration’s defense of the ban in the courts.

Sebastian Gorka, an adviser to Trump, told CNN that tweets “are not policy… [they’re] social media.” In short, Gorka reasoned as follows: Only policy binds the president. Tweets are not policy. Therefore, tweets cannot bind the president.

The premises put forward by Gorka miss the point. Tweets are statements. Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, out-of-court statements, including those made on social media, will be excluded as hearsay if they are used to prove the truth of the matter asserted.

But a statement that would otherwise be hearsay falls outside the definition of hearsay (and therefore can be used in court) if a party to the litigation (insert Trump) said it, and the statement is offered against that party by his opponent (insert those challenging the travel ban).

If you wonder whether Trump is a party to the litigation over his travel ban, here’s how his lawyers captioned the brief they filed on Thursday asking the Supreme Court to revive the ban, which has been blocked by the Fourth Circuit:

Statements via social media are still statements

A statement made through social media fits the exclusion from hearsay so long as it is offered against, not by, the party who made it. As District Judge J. Michelle Childs explains in an article for the American Bar Association:

Social media sites seem designed specifically for users to assert their views, relate their experiences, manifest agreement with others’ opinions, and acknowledge others’ activities. Courts have found these activities to come under [the rule’s] exclusion from hearsay by admission. For example, a plaintiff’s sexually explicit Facebook comments were not hearsay when used by the defendant to show that the defendant’s remarks concerning similar conduct should not be considered harassment against the plaintiff.

Of course, Trump’s lawyers know this, which is how we know that no lawyers reviewed his tweets. The lawyers for those challenging the travel ban know it, too, which is why they welcomed the tweets. Here’s reaction from Neal Katyal, who argued on behalf of the challengers in the Ninth Circuit:

And here’s reaction from Omar Jadwat, the attorney who persuaded the Fourth Circuit to suspend the travel ban:

Trump’s lawyers argue that if you set aside statements by Trump and his surrogates during the campaign (and a few statements following the inauguration) you’ll see that the appeals court erred in enjoining the travel ban. The presidential oath of office transformed Trump into the chief executive, whose determinations regarding immigration policy are entitled to deference by the courts, say his lawyers:

Taking that oath marks a profound transition from private life to the Nation’s highest public office, and manifests the singular responsibility and independent authority to protect the welfare of the Nation that the Constitution reposes in the President.

Trump shattered that notion in five 140-character outbursts. Expect to read his tweets in papers the Supreme Court has asked the challengers to file by this Monday. Yet in the end, the travel ban will fall not because the president tweeted about it. The travel ban will fall because it disfavors a particular religion in violation of the Constitution.

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The Fourth Circuit’s ruling against the Trump travel ban shows that campaigns also have consequences

President Trump’s halt to visits to the United States by people from six majority-Muslim countries excludes people from the United States based on their religious beliefs in violation of the First Amendment, the Fourth Circuit ruled  on Thursday in yet another rebuke to the White House over the constitutionality of its travel ban.

The executive order that enshrines the ban “speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination,” Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote on behalf of 10 of his colleagues at the outset of a 67-page opinion published Thursday by the court’s majority.

The ruling means that an order by a district judge in Maryland that blocks implementation of the ban nationwide will remain in effect pending a determination by the Supreme Court, to which the administration said it would appeal. A ruling by the Ninth Circuit, which also is weighing the travel ban’s constitutionality, is expected shortly.

Words matter

In support of its conclusion that the travel ban disfavors Islam, the court relied on a series of statements that the president and his surrogates uttered before and after the election. They range from a statement in December 2015 by Trump that called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” to statements by the president in January that his order aimed to promote Christianity, to comments in February by White House adviser Stephen Miller that the revised order reflects “the same basic policy outcome for the country” as the order it replaced.

Those statements, together with “the post hoc nature of the national security rationale” and evidence from national security agencies that a revised version of the travel ban signed in March by Trump would have no effect on national security persuaded the court that the administration’s leaning on national security “was provided in bad faith, as a pretext for [the order’s] religious purpose,” Gregory wrote.

Despite the urging of the government, the majority refused to disregard statements by Trump solely because he uttered them as a candidate. “The campaign statements here are probative of purpose because they are closely related in time, attributable to the primary decisionmaker, and specific and easily connected to the challenged action,” said Gregory, who declined to adopt “a bright-line rule against considering campaign statements” and said the court would continue to review such statements case-by-case.

The challengers “have seriously called into question whether the stated reason for” the travel ban was provided in good faith, noted the majority, citing a concurrence by Justice Kennedy in a ruling two years ago by the Supreme Court that suggests courts should look in such instances behind the reasons the government gives to support its actions.

In dissent, Judge Paul Niemeyer rejected the majority’s reliance on campaign statements, which are “often short-hand for larger ideas; they are explained, modified, retracted, and amplified as they are repeated and as new circumstances and arguments arise,” wrote Niemeyer. “The Supreme Court surely will shudder at the majority’s adoption of this new rule that has no limits or bounds — one that transforms the majority’s criticisms of a candidate’s various campaign statements into a constitutional violation.”

We may be about to find out.

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Why the Supreme Court will block Trump’s travel ban

Two-and-a-half years ago, in the aftermath of the Paris attacks, Congress, with the support of the Obama administration, tightened scrutiny of foreigners entering the United States who had visited Syria, Iran, Sudan or Iraq during the past five years. In February 2016, the Obama administration extended the scrutiny to visitors from Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

Fast forward to March, when President Trump issued an executive order that banned, for a period of three months, visits to the U.S. from nationals of three of those four countries (Iraq excluded) along with Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

In support of its decision, the White House cited reports published in June 2016 by the State Department that cataloged conditions in each country that cause their residents, as the administration asserts, to present a risk to the security of the U.S. The administration cited no evidence in the nine months that ensued (or since) to reinforce its conclusion that national security demands a halt to visits to the U.S. from residents of those six predominantly Muslim countries. (A travel ban would not have prevented an attack like the one Monday in Manchester, which was carried out by a citizen.)

The evidence cited by the White House to bolster its claims feels warmed over. That explains, in part, why the State of Hawaii and others suing to invalidate the ban accuse the president of leaning on national security as a pretext to disfavor Islam, in violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. A series of federal district judges, along with three judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court, have agreed with the challengers, who have adduced a series of statements by Trump and his surrogates that suggest an intent to enact a Muslim ban.

The appeal came before the Fourth and Ninth (again) circuits last week. Regardless how they rule, one of the parties will look for relief to the Supreme Court. Yet notwithstanding what will be a push by at least four justices –Roberts, Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch – to side with the president, the administration will struggle to secure a majority for its position. (More on Justice Kennedy in a moment.)

During arguments last Monday before the Ninth Circuit, Jeffrey Wall, the acting U.S. solicitor general, contended that the Supreme Court has authorized the president to restrict entry of foreigners into the U.S. and obligated judges to defer to that decision provided it is based on a “facially legitimate and bona fide reason.”

To say that Trump acted in bad faith with an intent to discriminate against Muslims, would require “the strongest showing for that sort of remarkable holding, and I just don’t think plaintiffs have put together the kind of record” that would support that conclusion, Wall argued.

Congress designated three of the six countries as sponsors of terrorism and removed visitors from those countries from the so-called visa waiver program, he noted. In short, Wall argued, the Trump travel ban reinforces a determination reached previously.

Therein lies the weakness of what Wall is defending. For all its talk of the need to bolster security, the White House has not assembled a record that could lead courts to defer to its judgement about the alleged threat posed by visitors from the banned countries. And that’s despite the law being largely on the president’s side.

You could see the judges of the Ninth Circuit struggling to find support in the record for the president’s determination about the threat that he contends the travel ban addresses. “How is a court to know if in fact it’s a Muslim ban in the guise of national security justification?” Judge Ronald Gould asked Wall. Is there sufficient evidence that admitting everyone from the six countries identified in the ban would threaten national security sufficient to justify the ban, Gould wanted to know.

Wall replied that the travel ban addresses concerns that Congress articulated after the attacks in Paris. But he offered nothing new to justify the ban, which Neil Katyal, who argued the case for the challengers, noted:

“We’re not here saying that the president doesn’t have emergency powers, national security powers. Of course, he does. The question is, when you have a circumstance like this, when the very evidence that they have pointed to was before the Congress of the United States, and they said, ‘We don’t need this mass, dragnet ban. Instead, we can do something more limited: require visas.’ That is particularly telling.”

Katyal argued that the executive order cites crimes committed by two people who entered the U.S. from Iraq, which is not subject to the travel ban. The order also mentions someone from Somalia, who came to the U.S. as a refugee when he was two years old and committed crimes when he was an adult, Katyal noted.

You start to see why a court might conclude that the White House has not reasoned its way through this one. Or that it really wants to ban Muslims.

Motive matters

Which brings us back to Justice Kennedy. Two years ago, the court ruled that a U.S. citizen cannot challenge the denial of a visa for her non-citizen spouse, an Afghan citizen and former civil servant who resided in Afghanistan. Not only did the government not infringe a constitutionally protected interest of the citizen when it denied the visa, but “to the extent that she received any explanation for the government’s decision, this was more than the Due Process Clause required,” Justice Scalia wrote for the majority.

While Justice Kennedy concurred that the citizen could not challenge the denial, he would not have gone as far as his colleagues. Once the government decides to deny a visa for a “facially legitimate and bona fide reason” (see above), courts will not “look behind” the reasons for the exercise of that discretion, particularly in the area of national security, Kennedy noted.

But in its decision to deny a visa to the non-citizen spouse, the government followed steps prescribed by law, Kennedy noted. So, he reasoned, the non-citizen spouse’s failure to satisfy a condition for admissibility (the spouse worked for the Taliban government), rendered the denial facially legitimate.

Thus, “absent an affirmative showing of bad faith on the part of the consular officer who denied [the non-citizen spouse] a visa,” (there was none) the court will not “look behind” the government’s decision “for additional factual details” that would explain its decision, Kennedy wrote.

The government can claim no such footing that would support the Trump travel ban, the plaintiffs argue. The ban does not turn on a decision by a consular officer to deny a visa, and, they assert, the president’s own statements suggest bad faith that compels the court to examine his motives. In short, motive matters when analyzing action by the government that disregards constitutional guarantees of religious freedom. “Official action that targets religious conduct for distinctive treatment cannot be shielded by mere compliance with the requirement of facial neutrality,” Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority in a 1993 case that involved religious gerrymandering.

The record is likely to lead at least five justices to look behind the justification that the White House has offered. When they do, they will struggle to find support that merits a ban that sweeps as broadly as Trump’s

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Judge orders White House to turn over Giuliani ‘Muslim ban’ memo

In their rulings blocking President Trump’s travel ban from taking effect, at least two federal judges have cited statements by the president and his surrogates as evidence that the White House sought to prevent Muslims from visiting the U.S. in violation of the Constitution.

Among the statements is one by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who told Fox News in January that Trump had asked him to “put a commission together” to advise on a ban and to show the president “the right way to do it legally.”

Now District Judge Victoria Roberts in Detroit has ordered the White House to turn over to the Arab American Civil Rights League and others suing to invalidate the ban a memo from Giuliani and several Trump advisers, including strategist Stephen Bannon and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, before they were in their current posts, as well as Michael Flynn, the former national security director.

“We believe these documents will show exactly how the Muslim ban that Donald Trump called for on the campaign trail turned into the executive order he issued a week after taking office,” Miriam Aukerman, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, said in a statement.

Giuliani says his comments to Fox have been misconstrued and that Trump had not asked him to formulate a ban on Muslims that could pass muster with the courts but instead asked “what can he do legally to keep the country safe.”

The commission sought to focus on “the areas of the world that create danger for us” and not religion, the former mayor said.

In a ruling in February that prevented the travel ban from taking effect, District Judge Leonie Brinkema noted that “the evidence in this record focuses on the president’s statements about a ‘Muslim ban’ and the link Giuliani established between those statements and the [executive order.]”

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Unpacking the arguments over Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’

Arguments on Monday before the Fourth Circuit over the constitutionality of the Trump travel ban highlight a collision of legal theories.

Jeffery Wall, the acting United States solicitor general, urged the 13-judge panel to defer to the president on what the government terms a matter of immigration policy and national security. In support of his argument, Wall leaned heavily on a ruling by the Supreme Court 45 years ago in a case known as Kleindienst v. Mandel.

That case arose from accusations by a group of university professors that a decision by the attorney general to deny a visa to Dr. Ernest Mandel, a Belgian academic and self-described “revolutionary Marxist” who sought to deliver a series of lectures at Americans universities violated the professors’ – all U.S. citizens – First Amendment right to hear Mandel’s views.

The court rejected their argument. Writing for the majority, Justice Blackmun noted that Congress had delegated to the president the power to make policies and rules for the exclusion of aliens. When the president exercises that power “on the basis of a facially legitimate and bona fide reason, the courts will neither look behind the exercise of that discretion nor test it by balancing its justification against the First Amendment interests of those who seek personal communication with the applicant,” he wrote.

In dissent, Justice Marshall expressed concern that the court would not examine the reason the White House gives for excluding someone, especially when a group of Americans accused the government of violating the First Amendment.

“Even the briefest peek behind the Attorney General’s reason for refusing a waiver in this case would reveal that it is a sham,” Marshall wrote. “At least when the rights of Americans are involved, there is no basis for concluding that the power to exclude aliens is absolute.”

Mandel became law. “The court said no… we are not going down the road of inquiring into subjective motivation” of the reasons why the president would deny a visa, Wall told the Fourth Circuit on Monday.

Of course, as Amy Davidson at The New Yorker observes, “Asking for a presumption of regularity, or legality, or just basic honesty, is asking a lot, when it comes to the Trump Administration.”

Examining the government’s motives

National security merely provides a pretext for banning Muslims, argues the International Refugee Assistance Project (the lead plaintiff in the case). The plaintiffs note that the president stated clearly during and after the campaign his goal of banning Muslims from coming to the U.S. Those utterances, the plaintiffs contend, provide the court with evidence to conclude that the executive order violates the Establishment clause, which prohibits the government from favoring one religion over another.

Mandel does not control the outcome in the travel ban appeal, say the plaintiffs. Instead courts must determine whether the law has a so-called secular purpose. In support of their argument, the plaintiffs cite a series of rulings, including a 1993 decision by the Supreme Court in Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah.

In that case, a church and its congregants practiced Santeria, which for them included ritual sacrifice of chickens, pigeons, doves, ducks, guinea pigs, goats, sheep and turtles. Prompted by the concerns of residents who did not want a Santeria church in their midst, the City of Hialeah adopted an ordinance that prohibited animal sacrifice within the municipality.

The church accused the city of aiming to exclude it in violation of the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment. Though city officials noted that the words of the ordinance said nothing about Santeria, the analysis doesn’t end there, said the court.

Motive matters when analyzing government action that may violate the First Amendment’s guarantees of religious freedom. “Official action that targets religious conduct for distinctive treatment cannot be shielded by mere compliance with the requirement of facial neutrality,” Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority. “The Free Exercise clause protects against governmental hostility which is masked, as well as overt.”

The plaintiffs in the travel ban appeal contend that the court can infer the administration’s motive from a series of statements by the president that expressed either an intent to ban Muslims from entering the country or otherwise conveying anti-Muslim sentiments.

An example: Before signing the first travel ban, which was later overturned, Trump said, “This is the protection of the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States. We all know what that means.” On Monday, after a reporter asked the White House press secretary why the president’s campaign website still mentioned “preventing Muslim immigration,” the online page was erased.

“We think that the ordinary Establishment clause cases apply,” Omar Jadwat, who argued on behalf of the plaintiffs, told the judges on Monday. “There is no reason to extend Mandel to this context. I think what the court is to do is to determine whether [the order] was issued in bad faith by looking at the evidence in this case.”

Jadwat cited three categories of evidence: the order itself, Trump’s statements and facts in the record that are not statements, including an analysis by the intelligence arm of the Department of Homeland Security that the executive order would not reduce terrorism in the U.S.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit is slated to hear arguments this Monday in the government’s appeal of an order by a judge in Hawaii that blocked enforcement of the travel ban nationwide.

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Judge in Hawaii blocks revised Trump travel ban

The Trump administration has failed in its second try to ban travel to the U.S. by people from six majority Muslim countries.

The ban, which represented a do-over by the White House after its first attempt was blocked by the courts, likely violates the Constitution’s prohibition on government’s preferring one religion over another, the U.S. District Court in Honolulu ruled on Wednesday, a day before the ban was to take effect.

A “reasonable, objective observer – enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance – would conclude that the executive order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion,” Judge Derrick Watson wrote in a 43-page ruling that halts enforcement of the ban nationwide.

The lawsuit originated with Ismail Elshikh, Ph.D., a U.S. citizen and the Imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii, who accuses the administration of violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In court papers, Dr. Elshikh cites a series of statements by the president, his staff and surrogates that the president set out to institute a ban on Muslims seeking entry to the U.S. Dr. Elshikh points to evidence that the travel ban is unlikely to strengthen national security.

The revised ban also contravenes the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process, by preventing Dr. Elshikh’s mother-in-law, a citizen of Syria who last visited the U.S. in 2005, from obtaining a visa to visit her family in Hawaii. “Citizens may have a constitutionally protected interest in specific non-citizens’ ability to travel to the United States,” the plaintiffs write in court papers.

The State of Hawaii, the co-plaintiff in the lawsuit, alleges that the revised ban will impede its ability to recruit students and faculty from the affected countries, as well as depress travel to and tourism in the Aloha State.

President Trump called the ruling an “unprecedented judicial overreach” and vowed to appeal it to the Supreme Court. At least a dozen states have sued to block the revised travel ban.

Separately, a federal judge in Maryland ruled Thursday that enforcement of the revised travel ban would violate the Establishment Clause, citing statements by the president and administration officials.

Despite the White House’s revising its executive order with the aim of the ban’s passing constitutional muster, “the history of public statements continues to provide a convincing case that the purpose of the second executive order remains the realization of the long-envisioned Muslim ban,” Judge Theodore Chuang wrote.