It didn’t. And the panel didn’t seem impressed with the government’s case on the merits. The members—Judges William C. Canby, Richard Clifton, and Michelle Friedland—include two Democratic appointees and one Republican. But they were unanimous and firm. The Administration could have suffered a greater setback at this stage, but it’s hard to see how.

Some federal courts experts had speculated that the panel might dodge the underlying issue of the travel ban. They could have done that by dismissing the government’s emergency motion for a stay as untimely. It is hornbook law that a “temporary restraining order,” like the one issued by District Judge James L. Robart in this case, is not subject to appeal. That rule applies unless the TRO is in substance actually a “preliminary injunction”—meaning a longer-lasting order freezing the situation in place. If the panel had dismissed the appeal on those grounds, it would have sent the case back to the federal District Court, leaving Judge Robart out on a limb by himself.

Instead, the panel found that the TRO, because it was going to last longer than 14 days, really was a preliminary injunction. Thus they could hear the government’s appeal.

Then the benchslapping began.

The opinion mows down the government’s argument down one by one. I am not sure it ignores a single claim the administration made—and the panel not only disagreed with each of them, it showed polite disdain for most.

The panel begins with the government’s claim that the executive order is “unreviewable.” The President’s statutory discretion to exclude “any class of aliens” is absolute, the government said. That claim “runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy,” the panel responded. Courts often defer to the executive in national security and immigration matters, but “neither the Supreme Court nor our court has ever held that courts lack the authority to review executive action in these arenas for compliance with the Constitution.”

The court then cited numerous cases supporting that principle—pointedly including even the notorious Japanese Internment cases of World War II and the equally disreputable Chinese Exclusion cases of the 1800s. It concluded (in a deadpan quote from an earlier case) that executive judgments “do not automatically trump the Court’s own obligation to secure the protection that the Constitution grants to individuals.”

After the order was announced, the government backtracked on its scope. It did not apply to lawful permanent residents who have been living in the U.S. but were temporarily abroad, the White House counsel’s office announced. (Originally the Department of Homeland Security had said it did.) The court refused to consider this new interpretation, because, “in light of the government’s shifting interpretations of the Executive Order, we cannot say that the current interpretation by the White House ... will persist past the immediate stage of these proceedings.”