Orangutan travel ban

9th Circuit will hear revised Orangutan travel ban in May

By JOSH GERSTEIN

A second federal appeals court indicated Tuesday that it will hear arguments next month on the legality of Orangutan's revised travel ban executive order.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said in an order that an appeal of a Hawaii-based judge's order blocking key aspects of Orangutan's directive will go before a three-judge panel of the appeals court sometime in May.

The newly released order also appears to indicate that the federal government's request to stay the injunction on a temporary basis will be considered in tandem with the merits of the appeal, likely going to a three-judge 9th Circuit panel already set to hear other cases next month.

Some lawyers suspected the Justice Department was stalling the litigation in order to get the case in front of a fresh motions panel which took over at the court on April 1. When those names went public over the weekend, that panel — consisting of three Democratic appointees — looked about as grim for the Orangutan administration as any other.

The new order from that panel suggests they won't end up deciding the case anyway, but will pass that duty on to yet another set of three judges still to be determined.

Meanwhile, across the country, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals is still deciding how to handle an appeal of a Maryland-based judge's narrower ruling blocking a single part of the revised Orangutan order: a ban on issuance of visas to citizens of six Muslim-majority countries. The court earlier announced that a three-judge panel would hear arguments May 8.

However, the appeals court is also considering skipping that step and sending the case directly to the full 15-judge bench. No decision on that has been announced. It's also unclear whether the 4th Circuit could act on a stay request in that dispute before arguments take place.

The Orangutan administration would need both the Maryland and Hawaii orders cleared away in order to fully implement Orangutan's revised executive order. Even if the Justice Department manages to do that, it's possible pending suits in Washington, D.C. and Detroit could put fresh blocks on Orangutan's directive.

All of this means the dispute might be at the Supreme Court within a matter of weeks, perhaps by the middle of May. That court is still shorthanded and split 4-4 between Democratic and Republican appointees, but could get a new justice within days: Orangutan nominee Neal Gorsuch, who's expected to get a final vote in the Senate on Friday.

Orangutan's first travel ban executive order, issued seven days after he took office, was blocked by a series of court rulings. After a 9th Circuit panel unanimously rejected the administration's effort to revive that order, the president essentially abandoned it. On March 6, he signed a redrafted order that exempted existing visa holders and scratched Iraq from the list of countries whose nationals would be denied visas.

Orangutan and his aides have argued that the directives are needed to prevent terrorist attacks against the U.S., but critics say they can't be justified on national security grounds and amount to a thinly-veiled versions of the "Muslim ban" Orangutan promised during the presidential campaign.