Discrimination and division: Hawaii sues over Trump’s revised travel ban

The state’s attorney general said there was fundamentally no difference between the revised ban and the original which was overturned by judges after mass protests and more than two dozen legal challenges.

Hawaii’s attorney general, Doug Chin, on March 8, 2017 announced his state had filed a lawsuit challenging US president Donald Trump’s revised travel ban. Audrey McAvoy / File / AP Photo

NEW YORK // Hawaii has become the first US state to file a lawsuit against president Donald Trump’s amended travel ban, saying it discriminates against Muslims, divides families and harms tourism.

The state’s attorney general said there was fundamentally no difference between the revised ban, signed on Monday, and the original which was overturned by judges after mass protests and more than two dozen legal challenges.

The new restrictions come into force on March 16. Travellers from six countries – Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – will be banned for 90 days and the entire refugee programme will be halted for 120 days.

Iraq was the seventh country on the list in the original ban, but was dropped after American politicians said it punished Iraqis who worked for the US armed forces and risked alienating a key ally in the fight against ISIL.

Another key difference is that this time, those already holding visas or green cards – which give foreign citizens permanent residency in the United States – will be exempt from the ban.

Although the amended ban is designed to avoid the travel chaos of the first order when travellers were detained at airports and deported, Hawaii attorney general Douglas Chin described it as a “Muslim ban 2.0”.

“Hawaii is special in that it has always been non-discriminatory in both its history and constitution,” he said.

Mr Chin added that the islands remember with regret what happened during the Second World War when Japanese-Americans were interned in camps, one of which was located in Hawaii.

The latest lawsuit was lodged by lawyers acting for Hawaii and for Ismail Elshikh, an imam who says his Syrian mother-in-law and family will not be allowed to visit once the ban begins.

“President Trump’s executive order is subjecting a portion of Hawaii’s population, including Dr Elshikh, his family, and members of his mosque, to discrimination and second-class treatment, in violation of both the Constitution and the Immigration and Nationality Act,” reads the suit, which was filed on Tuesday.

“The order denies them their right to associate with family members overseas on the basis of their religion and national origin.”

It also claims Hawaii universities and its economy will suffer if they cannot recruit freely from overseas populations.

Hakim Ouansafi, president of the Muslim Association of Hawaii, said there was no evidence that banning people from certain countries would make the US safer.

“This is again discriminating against six countries or seven doesn’t make it right,” he said.

US district court judge Derrick Watson on Wednesday approved the motion, giving Hawaii the go-ahead to proceed with its case. The state and the federal government must now submit their written arguments to the district court ahead of a March 15 hearing. At the hearing the state will argue that the judge should issue a temporary stay on the travel ban to prevent it from taking effect until the lawsuit has been resolved.

Meanwhile on Thursday, Bob Ferguson, the attorney general for Washington state who won a court challenge halting the original ban last month, said he would ask a federal judge in Seattle to apply the existing injunction to the revised ban.

“This is not a new lawsuit,” he said, adding that he would file the necessary motion later in the day. “In our view this new executive order contains many of the same legal weaknesses as the first and reinstates some of the identical policies as the original.”

Opponents of the ban elsewhere – including the American Civil Liberties Union and civil rights groups in Michigan – say they are also preparing to launch challenges.

Legal experts say the revisions may help Mr Trump avoid some of the most egregious harms of the original order, but they do nothing to avoid the charge that it was motivated by bias against Muslims.

The delay before the new ban’s implementation also suggested there was no imminent threat to national security.

Margo Schlanger, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School who is also working on a challenge, said: “The very major hardship that the last version imposed on people and the chaos introduced when it was implemented, all of that made it more vulnerable to attack than this one.”

“This case is less of a slam dunk than the last one, but the major underlying constitutional claim is that this ban was motivated against Muslims and there’s nothing in the new ban that makes this any less true.”

* With additional reporting by Associated Press