Trump administration is all set to fight the court ruling blocking the travel ban

Donald Trump’s original executive travel ban was stopped in its tracks even before it went into effect, the revised border didn’t fare any better. The revised ban was narrower in its scope and left room for special circumstances, it also removed Iraq from the list of countries whose people wouldn’t be welcome to the US. It was also worded better, and there was an opinion among legal experts that this time round, it might not be so easy to put a stop to the ban order.

But on Thursday, a Maryland US District Court Judge Theodore Chuang ruled against the order and imposed a halt on the portion of the order that deals with barring of foreign nationals. This ruling would be valid nationwide. The ruling stated that the plaintiffs’ claim that the order discriminated on the basis of religion is valid. The ruling will mean that the 90-day pause on the issuance of visas to citizens of Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen cannot be imposed.

The injunction can be overturned by a judge from a higher court and the Trump administration seems to believe that an appeals court judge will be more sympathetic to their cause. Department of Justice is all set to appeal against the Maryland judge’s ruling. A DOJ spokesperson told ABC News that the DOJ disagrees with the ruling and is looking forward to defending the President’s Executive Order seeking to protect United States’ security.

One day ahead of the Maryland court ruling, federal judge in Hawaii, U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson, decided to freeze the travel ban in its entirety thus stopping it from going into effect on March 16th. “A reasonable, objective observer — enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance — would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion,” the judge wrote in his ruling. President Trump slammed judge Watson’s ruling during a rally in Nashville and refused to back down.

It should be noted that the DOJ is appealing against the Maryland ruling and not the Hawaii one, this is because if they appealed against the Hawaii ruling then they would have to defend the ban in the same San Francisco appeals court that ruled against the original executive order.

(Writing by Ananya Dutta; Editing by Mohith Agadi)