Trump Seeks To Put Hawaii Case On Hold
The Trump administration says Hawaii’s challenge of travel ban should wait until a mainland case is resolved.
The Trump administration has filed an emergency motion in U.S. District Court in Honolulu, requesting to suspend all deadlines relating to Hawaii’s lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s .
Hawaii sued the Trump administration last week to block the president’s , which suspended refugee resettlements and temporarily barred citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.
As part of the lawsuit, Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin asked the court for a temporary restraining order against Trump鈥檚 order and a hearing on the state’s motion within 14 days.
The court, in turn, gave the Trump administration until noon Tuesday to file its opposition to Hawaii’s motion and set a hearing for聽Wednesday.
But, on Monday, the Trump administration asked that any proceedings in Hawaii be put on hold聽until a similar lawsuit brought by Washington and Minnesota can be resolved.
On Friday, just hours after Hawaii filed the lawsuit, a federal judge in Seattle placed a on Trump鈥檚 order, putting Trump鈥檚 order on hold nationwide.
In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge James Robart wrote that, “The state has met its burden in demonstrating immediate and irreparable injury.”
The Trump administration appealed Robart’s decision in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that the judge had “improperly second-guessed the president鈥檚 national security determinations.”
The 9th Circuit declined to immediately reverse Robart’s decision. Instead, on Monday, it on the case for Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration argues that Hawaii’s lawsuit no longer has any cause for urgency, given that Robart’s decision “already provided all the relief the state of Hawaii is seeking, so there is no longer any plausible basis for claiming imminent or ongoing irreparable harm to the state.”
But Chin opposes the Trump administration’s motion, arguing that, if Robert’s decision were lifted, Trump’s order will have a “window of time” to go back into effect and cause “all the harm it caused before.”
“Even one hour of the executive order’s resurgence would be one hour too many,” Chin wrote in his opposition to the Trump administration’s motion. “Simply by attempting to board an airplane at the wrong moment, yet another family would be split apart. And the Constitution would be applied in a manner that is mercurial, arbitrary and unfair.”
