[Photo:  by Eric Risberg, Pool/Associated Press]

The U.S. Justice Department will face off with opponents in a federal appeals court on Tuesday over the fate of President Donald Trump's temporary travel ban on people from 7 Muslim-majority countries.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco is to hear arguments about whether to restore the ban from Justice Department lawyers and opposing attorneys for the states of Minnesota and Washington at 3 p.m. PST.

Trump's Jan. 27 executive order barred entry for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days and imposed a 120-day halt on all refugees.

A federal judge in Seattle, responding to a challenge by Washington state, suspended the order last Friday, opening a window for people from the affected countries to enter the United States, pending the appeals process.

Trump, a Republican who took office on Jan. 20, has defended the ban as necessary to protect the country from the threat of terrorism, and has condemned court rulings against it.

Critics of the ban have called it discriminatory against Muslims and have questioned its value as a security measure.

All the people who carried out fatal attacks inspired by Islamist militancy in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were U.S. citizens or legal residents, the New America think tank says. None came to the United States or were from a family that emigrated from one of the countries listed in the travel ban, it says. (bit.ly/2keSmUO)

CRUX OF THE LEGAL ISSUE.    Although the legal fight over Trump's ban is ultimately about how much power a president has to decide who can and cannot enter the United States, the appeals court is set to rule after Tuesday's hearing on the narrower question of whether the Seattle court had the grounds to halt Trump's order.

Trump faces an uphill battle in the liberal-leaning San Francisco court, although the outcome of a ruling on the order's ultimate legality is less certain. Two members of 3-judge panel that will hear the arguments were appointed by former Democratic Presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, and one was appointed by former President George W. Bush.

Appeals courts are generally leery of upending the status quo, which in this case is the lower court's suspension of the ban. The case is likely to go to the Supreme Court.