The US Department of Justice says it will appeal a ruling upholding a suspension of President Donald Trump's travel ban to the US Supreme Court.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the decision in a statement on Thursday after a US appeals court upheld a lower court's ruling blocking Trump's executive order which bans travellers from six Muslim-majority countries.
The executive order Trump signed "is well within his lawful authority to keep the nation safe," Sessions said in a statement.
"The president is not required to admit people from countries that sponsor or shelter terrorism, until he determines that they can be properly vetted and do not pose a security risk to the United States," Sessions said.
The statement noted that the three dissenting judges on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, explained that the executive order is a "constitutional exercise of the president's duty to protect our communities from terrorism".
The appeals court upheld in a 10-3 decision a Maryland court's ruling in March that kept the executive order from going into effect.
The appeals court found that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed at trial in showing that the policy violates US constitutional prohibitions on religious discrimination.
Chief Judge Roger Gregory said Trump's order "speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination".
Gregory said that while Congress granted the president broad power to deny entry to aliens, that power is not absolute.
"It cannot go unchecked when, as here, the president wields it through an executive edict that stands to cause irreparable harm to individuals across this nation," he said.
The American Civil Liberties Union declared "victory" in the decision.
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