Hawaii Files Court Challenge To Trump’s New Muslim-Ban Criteria
On Thursday, the state of Hawaii filed a court challenge to the Trump administration’s limitations on travelers from six Muslim-majority nations.
Hawaii is asking a federal judge to rule that the administration cannot enforce a temporary ban against certain relatives.
The Trump administration guidelines say that travelers from the the Muslim-ban countries can only come to the U.S. to visit spouses, parents, children, siblings or sons- and daughters-in-law.
The state of Hawaii is seeking to expand the criteria to include: “fiancés, grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins of people currently living in the United States.”
“In Hawaii, ‘close family’ includes many of the people that the federal government decided on its own to exclude from that definition,” Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, this severely limited definition may be in violation of the Supreme Court ruling.”
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that a portion of Trump’s Muslim-ban could go forwar if travelers could prove a “bona fide” relationship with a U.S. citizen or entity.
The Supreme Court will hear the case in the Fall.
“To prevent the government from pursuing that objective by enforcing [the ban] against foreign nationals unconnected to the United States would appreciably injure its interests without alleviating obvious hardship to anyone else,” the court said.
[image via screenshot]
