The state of Hawaii on Monday urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to grant the Trump administration’s emergency request seeking to revive his plan to
temporarily ban travelers from six Muslim-majority nations after it was blocked by lower courts that found it was discriminatory.
Lawyers for Hawaii, which challenged Trump’s ban in court and won a nationwide injunction blocking it, said in court papers that his executive order is a “thinly veiled Muslim ban.”
In deciding whether to allow the ban to go into effect, the Supreme Court’s nine justices are set to weigh whether Trump’s comments as a presidential candidate can be used as evidence that the March 6 order was intended to discriminate against Muslims. Trump during the presidential campaign called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United
States.”
Monday is the deadline for the ban’s challengers to respond to the administration’s request that the order be allowed to go into effect.
In a separate challenge brought to Trump’s order in Maryland backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on May 25 declined to lift a Maryland federal judge’s injunction halting the temporary ban.