WASHINGTON – Attorney General Karl A. Racine has joined a coalition of 17 attorneys general in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the United States Supreme Court in opposition to the third version of President Trump’s travel ban.
The amicus brief was filed in Trump v. Hawaii (No. 17-965), ahead of arguments scheduled for April 25th. In this third challenge, a U.S. District Court entered a nationwide preliminary injunction that prohibits enforcement of President Trump’s indefinite ban on the entry into the U.S. of nationals from six overwhelmingly Muslim countries. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed the injunction, which protects foreign nationals with a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.
Click here to read the brief, which was led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and was also signed by New York, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington state.
“All of amici States benefit from immigration, tourism, and international travel by students, academics, skilled professionals, and business-people,” the brief says. “The disputed provisions of the Proclamation—like the previous bans—significantly disrupt the ability of our public universities to recruit and retain students and faculty, impairing academic staffing and research, and causing the loss of tuition and tax revenues, among other costs.
The brief goes on to say: “The Proclamation also disrupts the provision of medical care at our hospitals and harms our science, technology, finance, and tourism industries by inhibiting the free exchange of information, ideas, and talent between the designated countries and our States, causing long-term economic and reputational damage. In addition, the ban has made it more difficult for us to effectuate our own constitutional and statutory policies of religious tolerance and nondiscrimination.”
The brief, as have previous ones filed by the same coalition, details numerous grave and irreparable harms the states have continued to face because of the Trump administration’s travel bans. The indefinite nature of this third ban could very well make this damage permanent. The injunction would provide critical protection against those injuries.