In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 18‐1205 MOHSIN YAFAI and ZAHOOR AHMED, Plaintiffs‐Appellants, v. MIKE POMPEO, Secretary of State, et al., Defendants‐Appellees. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 1:16‐cv‐09728 — Sara L. Ellis, Judge. ____________________ On Petition for Rehearing En Banc. ____________________ MAY 23, 2019 ____________________ Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and FLAUM, EASTERBROOK, KANNE, ROVNER, SYKES, HAMILTON, BARRETT, BRENNAN, SCUDDER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM. On February 15, 2019, plaintiffs‐appellants filed a petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc. The panel voted to deny rehearing, and a majority of the judges in active service voted to deny rehearing en banc. Chief Judge Wood 2 No. 18‐1205 and Judges Rovner and Hamilton voted to grant rehearing en banc. It is therefore ordered that the petition for rehearing and for rehearing en banc is DENIED. No. 18‐1205 3 BARRETT, Circuit Judge, joined by FLAUM, Circuit Judge, respecting the denial of rehearing en banc. In the ordinary course, it is unnecessary to say anything more about a case once it becomes the law of the circuit. But three of our colleagues, dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc, have published an opinion that does more than just repeat the arguments already made by the panel dissent. These new points merit a response, lest it appear that the court did not consider them in deliberating whether to rehear the case. It is also important to clearly reject any implication that the panel’s opinion in Yafai v. Pompeo endorses a system in which the executive branch is free to deny visa applications on the basis of bias or whim. Yafai is about the amount of explanation that a consular official must provide when he denies a visa application that affects the constitutional right of an American citizen. The Supreme Court has held that, absent a showing of bad faith, a consular officer need only cite to a statute under which the application is denied. See Kerry v. Din, 135 S. Ct. 2128 (2015) (Kennedy, J., concurring); Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392, 2419 (2018). The officer in Yafai did that, but our dissenting colleagues would require more. They are not alone in pressing that argument: Supreme Court justices have made the same point in dissents from the controlling cases. The Court has repeatedly rejected it, however, so we are required to reject it too. *** The panel opinion provides a more thorough discussion of the facts, see Yafai v. Pompeo, 912 F.3d 1018 (7th Cir. 2019), but we provide an abbreviated version here. Mohsin Yafai and Zahoor Ahmed were born, raised, and married in Yemen. 4 No. 18‐1205 Yafai became a naturalized United States citizen in 2001. Several years later when Ahmed applied to become a citizen, a consular officer denied her visa application. The officer based the denial on attempted smuggling under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(E), which provides that “[a]ny alien who ...
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