Hawaii gets time to file new travel ban motion

HONOLULU — A federal judge Friday said that he would give Hawaii an opportunity to make its case that it should be allowed to challenge the Trump administration’s latest travel ban.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson said Hawaii would have until Tuesday morning to file a new motion. The government will have until Saturday to respond.

The latest travel ban removes Sudan from the list of affected countries and adds Chad and North Korea, along with several officials from the government of Venezuela. The ban is scheduled to take effect Oct. 18.

“Hawaii fought the first and second travel bans because they were illegal and unconstitutional efforts to implement the president’s Muslim ban,” Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the third travel ban is more of the same.”

The motion said the new version of travel ban “flouts the immigration laws’ express prohibition on nationality discrimination, grossly exceeds the authority Congress delegated to the president, lacks any rational connection to the problems it purports to address and seems to effectuate the president’s promise to ban Muslims from the United States.”

Chin has been battling President Donald Trump on travel bans since February, after the president sought to bar new visas for people from seven mostly Muslim countries.

When Trump revised the ban, Chin amended the lawsuit to challenge that version.

An attorney representing Hawaii notified the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday that the state intends to challenge the third travel ban.