On Thursday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a district court ruling placing a nationwide stay on the implementation of President Trump’s executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. The judge, Chief Judge Roger Gregory, is a President Bill Clinton appointee; he was reappointed by President George W. Bush. He was part of the Fourth Circuit majority that declared traditional marriage laws unconstitutional.
His decision on the travel ban is full of legal stupidities and outright manipulations. He begins by characterizing the Trump travel ban as “an Executive Order that in text speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” Now, it’s bad lawyering to appeal to language outside the text of a statute or executive order in order to strike down that law — a law is specifically-worded, carefully-crafted in order to be implemented in a particular way. Pointing to loose language by advocates for any given law would give the courts ample reason to strike down that law. For example, the Supreme Court could have, on that basis, struck down Obamacare as an unconstitutional mandate; President Obama had said repeatedly that Obamacare was not a tax. But the Court ignored his language — and the language of the law itself — in order to uphold Obamacare.
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