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U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban targeting people from six Muslim-majority countries exceeds his authority, a federal appeals court said Friday in the latest blow to the administration's anti-immigration agenda.
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"We conclude that the President’s issuance of the Proclamation once again exceeds the scope of his delegated authority," the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.
However the court placed a hold on its decision pending a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on the latest version of the ban, meaning the order will stay in effect for now.
The court also said Trump's contested travel ban should not be applied to people with strong U.S. ties. The order, first introduced in January, went into effect earlier this month after several court rulings blocking it and multiple revisions by the White House.
Trump issued his first travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries just days after he took office earlier this year, which caused chaos at airports and mass protests.
He issued a revised one in March after the first was blocked by federal courts. That expired in September after a court fight and was replaced with the current version.
The ban targets people from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen seeking to enter the United States. Trump's ban also covers people from North Korea and certain government officials from Venezuela, but the lower courts had already allowed those provisions to go into effect.
While Trump argues that the ban is meant to protect the U.S. national security, critics have said the ban is discriminatory against Muslims and point to Trump’s own campaign promise where he explicitly called for a total ban on all Muslims seeking to enter the country.
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