President Trump says a federal appeals court made a “political decision” when it refused to reinstate his ban on travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority nations.

If so, it was bipartisan politics.

The panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that issued Thursday’s 3-0 ruling consisted of two Democratic-appointed judges — William Canby, nominated by Jimmy Carter, and Michelle Friedland, named by Barack Obama — and one Republican, Richard Clifton, chosen by George W. Bush.

On Friday, the Trump administration was setting out a plan for what to do next. White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said that “every single court option is on the table,” including a high court appeal or “fighting out this case on the merits” in a lower court. Trump, meanwhile, told reporters he may sign a “brand new order” in response to Thursday’s ruling. But he said it probably would differ “very little” from the executive order he issued Jan. 27.

That order placed a 90-day ban on admission of anyone from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The order also halted all U.S. admission of refugees for 120 days, and barred refugees from war-torn Syria indefinitely.

A federal judge in Seattle blocked enforcement of Trump’s order a week later in a lawsuit by the states of Washington and Minnesota. The administration then filed an emergency motion asking the appeals court to suspend the judge’s ruling and reinstate the president’s order, arguing that courts lack both the wisdom and the authority to “second-guess” executive decisions on national security.

The panel unanimously rejected that argument. Such claims, the court said, are “contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy. Within our system, it is the role of the judiciary to interpret the law.”

The court’s decision to emphasize judicial independence was the road to a unanimous ruling that crossed ideological lines and sent a message to the White House, said Jayashri Srikantiah, a Stanford law professor and director of the school’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic.

“This message is one that’s not political,” she said Friday. “The judiciary’s role is to make sure the executive branch complies with the Constitution.”

Another immigration law professor, Bill Ong Hing of the University of San Francisco, said the appeals court judges obviously “want somebody to educate Donald Trump about Marbury vs. Madison,” the Supreme Court’s 1803 ruling that established the Constitution as the supreme law of the land and declared the courts’ duty “to say what the law is.”

The 3-0 vote came two days after a hearing in which the same court panel seemed divided, with Clifton pointedly questioning the states’ claim that the executive order was aimed at excluding Muslims, referring to their argument that Trump’s order discriminated on the basis of religion.

Since fewer than 15 percent of the world’s Muslims live in the seven nations, Clifton said, “the vast majority of Muslims would not be affected” by Trump’s order. He also asked the lawyer representing the states whether “we have to take your word for it” that the order was anti-Muslim. He observed that President Ronald Reagan had barred Cubans from entering the United States, a possible precedent for exclusions based on nationality.

But both Srikantiah and Hing said Clifton and his colleagues evidently decided to emphasize the issues on which they agreed — that the president must follow the law, that the states had legal grounds to challenge his order based on its potential impact on their universities, and that the exclusion of legal residents, visa-holders and refugees without advance notice or a hearing may violate their constitutional rights.

By contrast, the court sidetracked the states’ claim of discrimination against Muslims, the argument that did not appear to persuade Clifton at the hearing. The panel said the states had raised some “serious allegations,” but that they could be reviewed at a later stage of the case.

The court has ordered written arguments through March 29 on the disputed legal issues, and then will schedule a hearing on whether to block enforcement of the executive order indefinitely.

Those plans could change, however, if Trump makes substantial changes in the order, which was drafted hurriedly, was issued without warning, and has been criticized by a number of judges for unclear language and shifting government interpretations.

USF’s Hing said major revisions would be needed to survive judicial review.

While Trump’s lawyers have invoked a 1952 federal law authorizing the president to bar entry of “any class of aliens” that would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States,” Hing said the Bush and Obama administrations interpreted that law to apply only to terrorist organizations and other specific groups and not to entire nationalities. Another law, passed in 1965, prohibits discrimination in immigration decisions based on national origin.

“If you try to keep everyone out from Iran, Iraq or Syria, you cannot win that factual argument” in court, Hing said. “There are people who have come here (from those countries) who have not done us harm.”

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@egelko