{"id":583,"date":"2019-07-30T12:33:41","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T16:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/105-online\/glj-alum-halts-travel-ban-2\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:14:20","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:14:20","slug":"glj-alum-halts-travel-ban-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/submit\/glj-online\/105-online\/glj-alum-halts-travel-ban-2\/","title":{"rendered":"GLJ Alum Halts Travel Ban"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judge James L. Robart, a 1973 alum of Georgetown University Law Center and a former Administrative Editor of\u00a0The Georgetown Law Journal<\/cite>, issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) enjoining the enforcement of President Trump\u2019s\u00a0Executive Order of January 27, 2017<\/a>. The controversial Executive Order, titled \u201cProtecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,\u201d dramatically alters the United States admission process for non-citizens. Most notably, it temporarily bars refugees and nationals from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States.<\/p>\n

On January 30th, the State of Washington and the State of Minnesota filed an emergency motion for a TRO halting the Executive Order in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. Judge Robart heard oral argument on February 3rd and granted the motion from the bench. Hours later, Judge Robart issued a\u00a0seven-page order<\/a>. Under the order, the Federal Defendants\u2014including President Trump himself\u2014and their agents are restrained from enforcing sections 3(c), 5(a), 5(b), 5(c), and 5(e) of the Executive Order. Section 3(c) bans travel from the seven majority-Muslim countries. Section 5 suspends the refugee program and requires the refugee program, once resumed, to prioritize refugees persecuted as religious minorities.<\/p>\n

Judge Robart found that the Executive Order adversely affects Washington\u2019s and Minnesota\u2019s residents across the board\u2014in \u201cemployment, education, business, family relations, and freedom to travel\u201d\u2014and also damages \u201cthe operations and missions of their public universities and other institutions of higher learning.\u201d Perhaps most notably, he clarified that the \u201cTRO is granted on a nationwide basis\u201d\u2014prohibiting enforcement of the Executive Order at \u201call United States borders and ports of entry pending further orders.\u201d The court, he said, must intervene to \u201cfulfill its constitutional role in our tripart government.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the surprise of some commentators, the Department of Homeland Security quickly\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0that it would suspend all actions implementing the affected sections of the Executive Order, and the State Department announced that those with valid visas could enter the country. The Department of Justice immediately filed a\u00a0notice of appeal<\/a>\u00a0as well as a\u00a0motion in the Ninth Circuit<\/a>, requesting: (1) an\u00a0immediate administrative stay<\/em>\u00a0of Judge Robart\u2019s TRO pending full consideration of the emergency motion for a stay and (2) an emergency stay of the TRO pending appeal of the district court\u2019s injunctive order. The former being a more rapid implementation of the latter. The Ninth Circuit\u00a0denied<\/a>\u00a0the DOJ\u2019s request for an immediate administrative stay prior to any briefing on the emergency motion, but it gave the States of Washington and Minnesota only one day to draft a brief in opposition to the emergency motion, followed by only another fifteen hours for the DOJ to file its reply brief. The accelerated briefing schedule will culminate in a telephonic oral argument on Tuesday, February 7, 2017, less than 100 hours after the initial order. The plaintiffs\u2019 response is supported by amici, including\u00a0127 companies encouraging<\/a>\u00a0the Ninth Circuit to uphold Judge Robart\u2019s order.<\/p>\n

Judge Robart\u2019s decision is just the latest in a wave of lower court orders blocking parts of the Executive Order. On January 28th, the Eastern District of New York\u00a0granted a stay<\/a>\u00a0of the Order in\u00a0Darweesh v. Trump<\/cite>, and the Eastern District of Virginia\u00a0granted a TRO<\/a>\u00a0of the Order in\u00a0Aziz v. Trump<\/cite>. In the following days, the\u00a0Central District of California<\/a>, the\u00a0Eastern District of Michigan<\/a>, and the\u00a0District of Massachusetts<\/a>\u00a0also issued TROs against the Executive Order, though they varied in scope. The lone exception is a second judge in the District of Massachusetts, who concluded that the plaintiffs were unlikely to succeed on the merits and thus\u00a0denied a motion to extend the TRO<\/a>against the Executive Order. But amidst all the litigation, Judge Robart\u2019s ruling is the most sweeping of all\u2014and, for the moment, has stopped the Executive Order in its tracks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Judge James L. Robart, a 1973 alum of Georgetown University Law Center and a former Administrative Editor of\u00a0The Georgetown Law Journal, issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) enjoining the enforcement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":0,"parent":12,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-583","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23691,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/583\/revisions\/23691"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/georgetown-law-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}