Hawaii takes new travel ban to court
Federal judge will hear state’s arguments on blocking it
A federal judge in Hawaii will hear arguments on whether to block President Donald Trump’s revised executive order barring the issuance of new visas to citizens of six Muslim-majority countries the day before the measure is set to take effect.
U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson scheduled a hearing for March 15 at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time to hear arguments on the state of Hawaii’s latest legal challenge to the order.
Hawaii was expected to ask Judge Watson later Wednesday to immediately suspend the executive order, and state lawyers attached a copy of their new lawsuit to a different court filing asking the court to unfreeze the litigation over Mr. Trump’s original travel ban.
The 38-page complaint asserts that the new executive order — much like the old — violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment because it is essentially a Muslim ban, hurts the ability of state businesses and universities to recruit top talent and damages the financial interests of the state, which considers tourism its lead economic driver.
“President Trump’s new Executive Order is antithetical to Hawaii’s State identity and spirit,” lawyers for the state wrote. “For many in Hawaii, including State officials, the Executive Order conjures up the memory of the Chinese Exclusion Acts and the imposition of martial law and Japanese internment after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.”
Mr. Trump’s new travel ban is substantially revised from its original, and those who sue over it will probably have a harder time getting it immediately frozen by the courts. They will have to convince judges that there is an urgent need to do so and that, in the long term, Mr. Trump will probably be found to have run afoul of the First Amendment.
The new order reduces the list of affected countries from seven to six — removing Iraq while keeping Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Syria. It explicitly exempts legal permanent residents and current visa holders, blocking only the issuance of new visas for citizens of the affected countries for 90 days. It also spells out a lengthy list of people who may be eligible for exceptions, including those previously admitted to the United States for “a continuous period of work, study, or other long-term activity”; those with “significant business or professional obligations”; and those seeking to visit or live with family.
The new order keeps intact a 120-day suspension of the refugee program, and it declares that the United States will not accept more than 50,000 refugees in fiscal 2017, down from the 110,000 cap set by the Obama administration. It will take effect March 16 unless a court intervenes before then.
Also Wednesday, the city attorney of San Francisco asked a federal judge to issue an injunction blocking another executive order, which threatens to withdraw funding for sanctuary cities that do not extensively cooperate with federal immigration enforcement officials.