Thursday, May 25, 2017

Fourth Circuit En Banc Upholds Injunction Against President's "Travel Ban"

In its opinion in International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP)  v. Trump, heard by the en banc court without an intervening panel decision, the court affirmed in almost every respect Maryland District Judge Theodore Chuang's Opinion and nationwide injunction against the President's March 6, 2017 Executive Order "Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States" (now numbered EO 13,780), which is colloquially known as the revised travel ban or "Muslim Ban 2.0."  The court heard oral argument on May 8. 

The court's opinion finding that the plaintiffs have standing and that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their Establishment Clause challenge to the Executive Order was authored by Chief Judge Roger Gregory with six other judges joining in full in the almost 80 page opinion.  Additional opinions bring the total opinion pages to over 200: three other judges concurred in separate opinions;  Three judges dissented in separate opinions (with the dissenters joining each of the dissenting opinions). Recall that two other judges recused. 

On the merits of the Establishment Clause claim as applied to an Executive Order involving immigration, Judge Gregory's opinion for the court agreed with the United States that the deferential standard in Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972) is the appropriate starting point but disagreed with the government that it ended the inquiry.  Instead, "Mandel's requirement that an immigration action be 'bona fide' may in some instances compel more searching judicial review."  The court found that while the national security interest was facially legitimate, the plaintiffs made a requisite showing that it was provided in "bad faith."

Plaintiffs point to ample evidence that national security is not the true reason for EO-2, including, among other things, then-candidate Trump’s numerous campaign statements expressing animus towards the Islamic faith; his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States; his subsequent explanation that he would effectuate this ban by targeting “territories” instead of Muslims directly; the issuance of EO-1, which targeted certain majority-Muslim nations and included a preference for religious minorities; an advisor’s statement that the President had asked him to find a way to ban Muslims in a legal way; and the issuance of EO-2, which resembles EO-1 and which President Trump and his advisors described as having the same policy goals as EO-1. [citations to record omitted].  Plaintiffs also point to the comparably weak evidence that EO-2 is meant to address national security interests, including the exclusion of national security agencies from the decisionmaking process, the post hoc nature of the national security rationale, and evidence from DHS that EO-2 would not operate to diminish the threat of potential terrorist activity.

Having cleared the hurdle of Mandel, the court then considered the application of the Establishment Clause test articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, noting that "in the context of this case, there is an obvious symmetry between Mandel's "bona fide" prong and the constitutional inquiry establishment in Lemon. Both tests ask courts to evaluate the government's purpose for acting."

Thus, Judge Gregory's opinion analyzed some of the same material regarding the EO's bona fide quality to determine whether the EO had a primary secular government purpose as required under Lemon's first prong.  But the analysis the court conducted under Lemon was much more detailed.  The court relied upon McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky (2005), in which the United States Supreme Court concluded that a judge's initial removal of his posting of the Ten Commandments in the courthouse was not cured by his subsequent posting of the biblical text surrounded by other texts.  In McCreary, the Court articulated the correct viewpoint as the "reasonable objective observer" who should take into account the traditional external signs but should not perform judicial psychoanalysis. 

It is this portion of the opinion (Part IVA2; pages 54-70 in text) regarding the purpose of EO-2 that is central.  The court finds there is a "compelling case" that EO-2's "primary purpose is religious."  It begins by discussing the candidate's campaign statements, later rejecting the argument that these statements should be subject to a "bright-line rule" that they should not be considered.  Instead, the court states that 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." 

Just as the reasonable observer’s “world is not made brand new every morning,” McCreary,  nor are we able to awake without the vivid memory of these statements. We cannot shut our eyes to such evidence when it stares us in the face, for “there’s none so blind as they that won’t see.” Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation 174 (Chiswick Press ed., 1892). If and when future courts are confronted with campaign or other statements proffered as evidence of governmental purpose, those courts must similarly determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether such statements are probative evidence of governmental purpose. Our holding today neither limits nor expands their review.

Moreover, the court considered the by now familiar statements by spokespeople: advisor and former mayor Rudolph Guiliani on EO-1; Senior Policy Advisor Miller and White House Press Secretary Spicer on EO-2.  The court further found that the government's argument that EO-2's primary purpose was national security rather than religious

is belied by evidence in the record that President Trump issued the First Executive Order without consulting the relevant national security agencies, J.A. 397, and that those agencies only offered a national security rationale after EO-1 was enjoined. Furthermore, internal reports from DHS contradict this national security rationale, with one report stating that “most foreign-born, US-based violent extremists likely radicalized several years after their entry to the United States, limiting the ability of screening and vetting officials to prevent their entry because of national security concerns.” According to former National Security Officials, Section 2(c) serves “no legitimate national security purpose,” given that “not a single American has died in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil at the hands of citizens of these six nations in the last forty years” and that there is no evidence of any new security risks emanating from these countries. Corrected Brief for Former National Security Officials as Amici Curiae Supporting Appellees 5–8, ECF No. 126-1. Like the district court, we think this strong evidence that any national security justification for EO-2 was secondary to its primary religious purpose and was offered as more of a “litigating position” than as the actual purpose of EO-2. See McCreary, 545 U.S. at 871 (describing the government’s “new statements of purpose . . . as a litigating position” where they were offered to explain the third iteration of a previously enjoined religious display). And EO-2’s text does little to bolster any national security rationale: the only examples it provides of immigrants born abroad and convicted of terrorism-related crimes in the United States include two Iraqis—Iraq is not a designated country in EO-2—and a Somalian refugee who entered the United States as a child and was radicalized here as an adult. EO-2, § 1(h). The Government’s asserted national security purpose is therefore no more convincing as applied to EO-2 than it was to EO-1.

In short, the court found that EO-2 cannot be divorced from the cohesive narrative linking it to the animus that inspired it," and thus EO-2 "likely fails Lemon's purpose prong" and is unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause.

The court affirmed the preliminary injunction as appropriately nationwide, but did agree with the government that the injunction should not be issued "against the President himself."  Thus, the injunction was lifted in that regard, although the court noted that while the President was not directly bound, the court assumes "it is substantially likely" that the President would abide by the the court's authoritative interpretation of section 2 of EO-2.

Recall that a Ninth Circuit panel is also considering the constitutionality of EO-2; it heard oral arguments on May 15 in Hawai'i v. Trump.

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/2017/05/fourth-circuit-en-banc-upholds-injunction-against-presidents-travel-ban.html

Courts and Judging, Current Affairs, Establishment Clause, First Amendment, Opinion Analysis, Religion, Standing, Travel | Permalink

Comments

Well, they're off to see the SCOTUS...

Posted by: Tom N | May 25, 2017 10:41:43 PM

The Great and Powerful SCOTUS spoke...

Posted by: Tom N | Jun 26, 2017 10:15:49 PM

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