U.S. judge hearing arguments on longer block to travel ban
HONOLULU » A federal judge in Hawaii who temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban was hearing arguments Wednesday on whether to extend his order until the state’s lawsuit works its way through the courts.
Even if U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson does not issue a longer-lasting hold on the ban, his temporary block would stay in place until he rules otherwise. Legal experts say it is unlikely Watson would side with the Trump administration.
The state says the policy discriminates against Muslims, while the government says it falls within Trump’s power national security.
State Attorney General Douglas Chin started his arguments by quoting Trump’s comments that the revised travel ban is a “watered down” version of the first one.
In court documents, Hawaii said extending the temporary order until its lawsuit was resolved would ensure the constitutional rights of Muslim citizens across the U.S. are vindicated after “repeated stops and starts of the last two months.”
The Department of Justice opposed Hawaii’s request but said that if Watson granted it, he should narrow his ruling to cover only the part of Trump’s executive to protect order that suspends new visas for people from six Muslim-majority countries.
Watson also prevented the administration from freezing the U.S. refugee program earlier this month in a ruling that came just hours before the federal government planned to start enforcing the executive order.
Hawaii’s lawsuit doesn’t show how the state would be harmed by other sections of the ban, including the refugee suspension, government attorneys said in court papers.
Other parts of the travel ban “do not apply to plaintiffs at all, but instead simply facilitate the government’s ability to identify and fix potential gaps in the nation’s vetting procedures,” Trump lawyers wrote.
The judge, nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama in 2012, agreed with Hawaii earlier this month that the ban would hurt the state’s tourism-dependent economy and that it discriminates based on nationality and religion.
The imam of a Honolulu mosque has joined the state’s legal challenge, arguing that the ban would prevent his Syrian mother-in-law from visiting family in Hawaii.
Trump called Watson’s ruling an example of “unprecedented judicial overreach.”
The next day, a judge in Maryland also blocked the six-nation travel ban but said it wasn’t clear that the suspension of the refugee program was similarly motivated by religious bias.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has set a hearing for May 8 to consider the administration’s appeal of the Maryland ruling.
If the Richmond, Virginiabased court sides with the federal government, it would not have a direct effect on the Hawaii ruling, legal experts said.
“What a ruling in 4th Circuit in favor of the administration would do is create a split in authority between federal courts in different parts of the country,” said Richard Primus, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Michigan law school.