Judge Richard Posner (Photo by Chensiyuan via Wikimedia Commons.)
Oy. This is not what Governor Mike Pence (R-Indiana) needed the day before his vice-presidential debate with Senator Tim Kaine (D-Virginia).
Governor Pence just got benchslapped by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in a curt and concise opinion by Judge Richard Posner. Chris Geidner of BuzzFeed reports:
A federal appeals court on Monday harshly criticized Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s attempt to stop payments to a nonprofit organization that assists with resettlement of Syrian refugees.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a preliminary injunction entered against the Indiana governor forbidding him from banning payments to the nonprofit.
Governor Pence’s administration tried to cut off payments to Exodus Refugee Immigration, Inc., a nonprofit organization that assists refugees, some of them Syrian refugees. The Pence administration cited the possibility that some of these Syrian refugees might be terrorists. But as Judge Posner’s opinion points out:
“[The state’s] brief provides no evidence that Syrian terrorists are posing as refugees or that Syrian refugees have ever committed acts of terrorism in the United States. Indeed, as far as can be determined from public sources, no Syrian refugees have been arrested or prosecuted for terrorist acts or attempts in the United States.”
The policy “is discrimination on the basis of nationality,” Posner concluded in a section that compared Pence’s argument to the argument of a person claiming that it would not be racial discrimination to say that one ‘wants to forbid black people to settle in Indiana not because they’re black but because [the person]’s afraid of them.'”
The Trump campaign likes to claim that the judges who rule against its interests are biased, but that particular excuse probably won’t wash here. Judge Posner’s opinion was joined by two conservative legal stalwarts, Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judge Diane Sykes — yes, the same Judge Sykes who’s on Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist.
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Federal Appeals Court Slams Mike Pence For Syrian Refugee Opposition [BuzzFeed]
Earlier: Making SCOTUS Great Again: Trump’s Supreme Court Shortlist
David Lat is the founder and managing editor of Above the Law and the author of Supreme Ambitions: A Novel. You can connect with David on Twitter (@DavidLat), LinkedIn, and Facebook, and you can reach him by email at [email protected].