Obama’s Home State Files First Lawsuit Against Donald Trump’s New Travel Ban

Former President Barack Obama’s home state of Hawaii is moving quickly to file a lawsuit against Donald Trump’s second attempt at enacting a travel ban that targets Muslims and refugees.

According to CNN, attorneys in the state said in legal filings that they are planning to ask a federal judge on Wednesday to quickly issue a temporary restraining order which would, like was done with the previous ban, block the new directive from being implemented.

While the new Trump order does, in fact, reduce the number of people targeted and removes Iraq from the list of banned Muslim-majority countries, the unconstitutional intent remains the same.

“To be sure, the new executive order covers fewer people than the old one,” Hawaiian attorney Neal Katyal told CNN, adding that the updated ban “suffers from the same constitutional and statutory defects” as the first one, which the president was forced to abandon as it suffered repeated legal losses.

Ultimately, even if the new executive order is upheld in the courts, which remains an unanswered question, this is still a bad policy that hurts America’s reputation and targets the most vulnerable people in the world – specifically women and children seeking safety from violent, war-torn regions.

According to a New York Times story published Tuesday, the order “leaves few spots for refugees, even the hunted.”

The new order is the same bad, constitutionally questionable policy as the first one, and it looks like it will face the same legal fights as well.

Sean Colarossi

Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.