The US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] received two separate filings Monday from officials in the public and private sectors who oppose President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration. The appellate court is considering a district judge’s ruling [JURIST report] that temporarily suspended the order. In a declaration to the court [text, PDF], 10 former government officials, including directors for the CIA, NSA, and Homeland Security, and former secretaries of state John Kerry and Madeleine Albright, urged the court to “[m]aintain[] the district court’s temporary restraining order while the underlying legal issues are being adjudicated.” Hours earlier, representatives from 97 technology companies filed an amicus brief [text, PDF] urging the court to deny the government’s motion to restore the immigration order, claiming the order “inflicts significant harm” on their businesses. Many of the companies included in the brief are among the largest tech companies in the country, including Microsoft, Facebook, Uber, Apple, eBay, Twitter, Wikipedia and Netflix [corporate websites]. According to their brief:

The Order represents a significant departure from the principles of fairness and predictability that have governed the immigration system of the United States for more than fifty years—and the Order inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation, and growth as a result. The Order makes it more difficult and expensive for U.S. companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world’s best employees. It disrupts ongoing business operations. And it threatens companies’ ability to attract talent, business, and investment to the United States.

The Ninth Circuit refused [JURIST report] over the weekend to reinstate the executive order, requesting briefs from both sides.

Trump signed the executive order [JURIST op-ed] in late January. Only a day later, a judge for the Eastern District of New York issued an emergency stay [JURIST report], temporarily preventing execution of the law, until the question of whether it applied to valid visa holders could be resolved. The issue was resolved by a district judge in Michigan, who ordered [JURIST report] that the travel ban could not be applied to legal citizens, including those holding visas.