Federal appeals court declines to weigh in on Hawaii challenge to travel ban rules News
Federal appeals court declines to weigh in on Hawaii challenge to travel ban rules

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] on Friday dismissed [order, PDF] Hawaii’s appeal to challenge the rules of the Trump administration’s travel ban. The three-judge panel decided that the court did not have jurisdiction, clarifying that the question should be posed to the US Supreme Court. Hawaii was lodging an attempt to allow grandparents and certain other relatives to be classified as having a “bona fide” relationship, allowing them to come into the US. It is unclear what steps Hawaii might take now that the Ninth Circuit has declined to address the issue. As it stands the only relationships that are classified as bona fide connections are parents, spouses, sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, fiances and siblings.

The travel ban has been a contentious topic since the Trump administration first implemented the executive order [materials], and continues to face a series of federal legal action. On Thursday a federal judge in Hawaii denied [JURIST report] the state’s attempt to exempt grandparents the ban. In June the US District Court for the Western District of Washington denied in part [JURIST report] and granted in part a motion to dismiss a class action suit filed against President Donald Trump and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) [official website]. Also in June the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan temporarily blocked [JURIST report] the deportation of more than 100 Iraq nationals, arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) [official website] agents, for approximately two weeks, during which time the court will decide whether it has jurisdiction in the matter. Earlier that same month the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against [JURIST report] the majority of Trump’s revised executive order limiting travel from six Muslim-majority countries. That ruling affirmed [JURIST report] the majority of a district court injunction in March that blocked the order from being enforced. In May a federal district court in Washington granted a temporary restraining order [JURIST report] to allow legal aid groups to continue to provide certain kinds of assistance to undocumented immigrants.