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Citing Trump’s tweet, appeals court rules against president’s travel ban


Citing Trump’s tweet, appeals court rules against president’s travel ban

On Monday, a federal appeals court ruled against President Donald Trump's revised travel ban. This decision is based, in part, on the commander-in-chief's statement on Twitter.

The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, said Trump's banning of nationals from six largely Muslim nations from entering the US "makes no finding that nationality alone renders entry of this broad class of individuals a heightened security risk to the United States." The court said that the president, based on his own tweet, has signed an overly broad executive order that illegally targets people solely because of their country of origin.

"Indeed, the President recently confirmed his assessment that it is the 'countries' that are inherently dangerous, rather than the 180 million individual nationals of those countries who are barred from entry under the President’s travel ban," the court wrote, citing one of Trump's June 6 tweets.

On that day, the president tweeted: "That's right, we need a TRAVEL BAN for certain DANGEROUS countries, not some politically correct term that won't help us protect our people!"

The appeals court upheld a lower court judge who said Trump's position on immigration, which has been vehemently opposed by the tech sector, disfavored Muslims in violation of the US Constitution's ban on the establishment of religion.

The appellate court's unanimous 3-0 decision comes a week after a Morning Consult-Politico survey concluded that the public was growing tired of Trump's tweets from his @realDonaldTrump handle, which has 32.1 million followers and more than 35,000 tweets. More than half of those responding to the online poll also said his tweets could have a deleterious effect on the nation's national security interests.

Monday's ruling was the second to go against Trump on his revised travel ban. The first one, decided May 25, cited Trump's campaign statement in which he said he wanted a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to lift the legal blockade to his order from being enforced. In response, the state of Hawaii, which is challenging the immigration order, told the Supreme Court on Monday that it should consider the president's tweets when it decides the constitutionality of the order.


Trump issued a revised immigration order in early March, after his first order was also overturned by the courts. The latest order, the administration told the justices, "suspends for 90 days the entry of foreign nationals from six countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism (Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen)." The administration, in a strategy to circumvent his tweets and campaign statements, told (PDF) the justices that US Constitution grants the commander-in-chief "broad authority to prevent aliens abroad from entering this country when he deems it in the nation's interest."

Hawaii, however, pointed to a variety of statements the president made, including those published on his Twitter feed.

"As long as a rational observer would view the primary purpose of the policy as neutral, the President will encounter no judicial obstacle," Hawaii argued. "Indeed, if the President had not used the first Order's public signing ceremony, numerous public interviews and speeches, and his Twitter account to make a series of barely veiled statements linking the Orders to his promised Muslim ban, this Order might have passed constitutional muster."

The justices did not say when they would rule.

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Channel Ars Technica