A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Obama administration did not undergo the correct procedure to prohibit elephant hunting trophies from being brought into the U.S. from Zimbabwe.

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit claimed the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service should have completed a thorough process of proposing the ban. This means the public should have been allowed to comments and the regulation should have been finalized when it made determinations elephant trophies were prohibited from being imported to the U.S.