The legal fight over Trump’s executive order

Monday, Feb. 6: Read Washington and Minnesota’s brief arguing against the Trump administration’s appeal

Wash­ing­ton and Min­nesota, which filed the ini­tial law­suit that led to a halt of the travel ban, filed this brief ar­guing against the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ap­peal. They ar­gue that the re­stric­tions on im­mig­ra­tion for people from sev­en pre­dom­in­antly Muslim coun­tries “un­leashed chaos” and caused “ex­traordin­ary and ir­re­par­able harm … on our states and our people.” They spe­cific­ally com­plain of dam­age to state uni­versity sys­tems “by strand­ing our uni­versity stu­dents and fac­ulty over­seas,” and say the ban would cost the states tax rev­en­ue. They also ar­gue that it is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, and that there is no evid­ence it was needed for na­tion­al se­cur­ity reas­ons.