Court orders dismissal of Trump Muslim travel ban challenges

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday ordered a lower court to dismiss legal challenges to President Donald Trump's 3-year-old ban on travelers from predominantly Muslim countries, finding that a judge misinterpreted a Supreme Court ruling that found the ban has a "legitimate grounding in national security concerns."

The ban, put in place just a week after Trump took office in January 2017, sparked an international outcry from Muslim advocates and others who said it was rooted in religious bias.

A three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a federal judge in Maryland made a mistake when he refused to dismiss three lawsuits after the Supreme Court upheld the ban in 2018 in a separate case filed in Hawaii.

“We conclude that the district court misunderstood the import of the Supreme Court’s decision in Hawaii and the legal principles it applied,” Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote in the unanimous decision.

During a hearing in January, Mark Mosier, an attorney representing U.S. citizens and permanent residents whose relatives have been unable to enter the U.S. because of the ban, asked the court to allow the legal challenges to proceed.

Mosier argued that the Supreme Court — in the Hawaii case — rejected a preliminary injunction to block the travel ban, but did not decide the merits of the constitutional claims made in the lawsuits. The plaintiffs argued that the travel ban violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from favoring one religion over another.

Mosier said the lawsuits should be allowed to proceed so the plaintiffs can gather evidence on their claim that the travel ban is rooted in anti-Muslim bias and that the Trump administration’s claim of national security concerns is a pretext for the...