A judge for the US District Court for Hawaii on Tuesday blocked [order, PDF] the implementation of the latest version [text, PDF] of President Donald Trump’s so-called travel ban [JURIST news archive]. The ban significantly limits travel to the US from six majority-Muslim countries and North Korea.

In the ruling, the judge said the latest version of the ban violates the Immigration and Nationality Act’s prohibition [section 1152(a), text] on nationality-based discrimination. This is the same law the Ninth Circuit ruled [JURIST report] an earlier version of the ban [text] violated. Lawyers for the Trump administration had argued that he had the authority to block travel from the specified countries under the law [section 1182(f), text], but the court found the argument unconvincing:

Ignoring the guidance afforded by the Ninth Circuit that at least this Court is obligated to follow, [the new ban] suffers from precisely the same maladies as its predecessor: it lacks sufficient findings that the entry of more than 150 million nationals from six specified countries would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States,” a precondition that the Ninth Circuit determined must be satisfied before the Executive may properly invoke Section 1182(f). And [the new ban] plainly discriminates based on nationality in the manner that the Ninth Circuit has found antithetical to both Section 1152(a) and the founding principles of this Nation.

Earlier this month, the US Supreme Court dismissed a separate challenge [JURIST report] to the earlier, now-expired, version of the ban as being moot.