Another US Appeals Court Rules Against Trump's Revised Travel Ban

But the 9th Circuit sidestepped that question, saying they didn't need to answer it because the legality of the travel ban could be decided on narrower grounds: It violated immigration law.

ABC News' Kate Shaw explains, however, how the 9th Circuit decision complicates the case against the ban. A Virginia-based appeals court upheld the Maryland ruling. "National security is not a "talismanic incantation" that, once invoked, can support any and all exercise of executive power".

It's the second such decision in less than a month.

Reacting to the decision, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said, "We continue to be confident that the president's executive order to protect this country is fully lawful and ultimately will be upheld by the Supreme Court". Since the decisions in the Fourth Circuit did not touch on this issue, the administration is presumably empowered to move ahead on that front based on the Ninth Circuit decision.

"Immigration, even for the president, is not a one-person show", the judges wrote in a unanimous opinion.

On Feb. 9, another panel of three judges ruled in San Francisco, Northern California, against reinstating the travel ban signed on January 27 by Trump as part of an executive order.

The American Civil Liberties Union, for example, warned in a tweet that it was planning to use Trump's tweets as evidence in its ongoing fight against the order. As a result, they found the order to be probably unconstitutional. It cited the president's campaign statements calling for a "total and complete shutdown" on Muslims entering the U.S. The administration's lawyers have been arguing that the ban is not religiously motivated, or discriminatory. That helped show he was not assessing whether the six countries had ties to terrorism, they said. The judges pointed to a dissent from a notorious World War II-era case that allowed for Japanese internment camps. The president had no apparent national-security justification for his attempt-"unprecedented in its scope, purpose, and breadth"-to close off the border". The administration appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court. It's now almost universally recognized as being unconstitutional and profoundly unjust, born of 'race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership, ' as a congressional apology put it. Since then, several other courts have agreed with the 9th Circuit, and despite Trump issuing a watered-down version of the policy in March, his travel ban still hasn't been able to pass constitutional muster, and it remains blocked. The court said he was required to consult with Congress in setting the number of refugees allowed into the country in a given year and that he could not decrease it midyear.

"Although the executive order has broad discretion over the admission and exclusion of aliens, that discretion is not boundless", the court said.

"The district court did not abuse its discretion in entering a nationwide preliminary injunction", the judges wrote in their opinion. "We vacate the portions of the injunction that prevent the Government from conducting internal reviews".

Based on the conditions in those countries, the government made a determination that "the risk of erroneously permitting entry of a national of one of these countries who intends to commit terrorist acts or otherwise harm the national security of the United States is unacceptably high".

The administration has already appealed that ruling, but has not asked for it to be heard on an expedited basis - so likely on the court's fall calendar.

Sessions says the court's decision "has a chilling effect on security operations overall".

The American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) has said that it is waiting to see how the policy will impact U.S.travel agents. The Supreme Court has not yet said whether it will take up the case.