WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to let it move forward with the president's plan to temporarily ban citizens from six mostly Muslim countries.
Department of Justice lawyers asked the court to overturn a decision of the full 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that kept in place a freeze on Trump's revised ban.
The 10-3 ruling last week was one in a series of legal defeats for the administration, as judges across the country have said Trump's claim of protecting the nation was cover for making good on a campaign promise to ban Muslims from entry into the United States.
The government's filing late Thursday asks the justices to set aside the 4th Circuit ruling and accept the case for oral arguments. It also asks the high court to lift a nationwide injunction issued by a federal judge in a separate Hawaii case. A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Hawaii, heard the government's arguments in that case last month but has not yet ruled.
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Justice Department spokesman Sarah Isgur Flores said Thursday that the administration is "confident that President Trump's executive order is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe and protect our communities from terrorism."
"The president is not required to admit people from countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism, until he determines that they can be properly vetted and do not pose a security risk to the United States," she added.
The president's travel order has been one of the most contentious since Trump took office, as the first entry ban created chaos at airports around the world and prompted major protests in the U.S. and abroad.
Trump has denounced judicial decisions freezing the ban as unprecedented attacks on his power to fulfill his most important role, keeping the nation safe.
It would take the votes of five of the nine justices to grant the government's request and require a finding that the government was likely to prevail on the merits of its argument -- and that it would be irreparably harmed if the 4th Circuit's decision remained in place.
The ban, if permitted, is proposed to be temporary, to give the government 90 days to study and implement new vetting procedures. Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall has said the ruling in the Hawaii case has prevented the government from moving forward on those objectives.
Trump on Jan. 27, just a week after inauguration, issued the first travel ban executive order. It barred the entry of citizens of seven majority Muslim nations -- Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Syria and Libya; ordered a temporary halt to refugee arrivals; and would have eventually given preference to those who were members of religious minorities in their countries, such as Christians.
Several judges and a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals shut it down.
Trump vowed to go to the Supreme Court that time, too, but eventually issued a new order. That order, the subject of the 4th Circuit ruling, removed Iraq from the list, deleted references to religion and added national security rationales for the policy.
But it was stopped by federal district judges in Maryland and Hawaii.
In the 4th Circuit, which covers Maryland, six judges agreed in full with an opinion by Chief Judge Roger Gregory that the national security rationale advanced by the president was simply pretext for unlawful animosity toward Muslims and an attempt to make good on a campaign promise to bar Muslims from entry into the country.
He cited Trump's campaign rhetoric and statements made when he signed the executive orders, and said courts had an obligation to look beyond their seemingly neutral language.
The order "speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination," Gregory wrote. "Surely the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment yet stands as an untiring sentinel for the protection of one of our most cherished founding principles -- that government shall not establish any religious orthodoxy, or favor or disfavor one religion over another."
Judge Barbara Milano Keenan said Trump had made no finding that the citizens of the six countries provided a specific threat to the U.S. And Judge James Wynn Jr. said Congress did not give the president power to take action based on "invidious discrimination."
All of the judges ruling against Trump were nominated to the appeals court by Democratic presidents. The three dissenting judges were nominated by Republicans and said their colleagues had wandered into uncharted territory by relying on campaign statements to find an establishment-clause violation.
A Section on 06/02/2017