Judge denies request to apply previous travel ban block to Trump’s revised order

The Seattle-based federal judge who blocked President Trump’s first travel ban has denied a request from Washington and other states to apply that original injunction to the president’s revised order.

Instead, U.S. District Judge James Robart, a George W. Bush appointee, will rule later on a separate request from the states to place a new restraining order on Trump’s revised executive action, he wrote in a decision first reported by BuzzFeed News.

Robart issued the original restraining order blocking enforcement of Trump’s Jan. 27 travel ban nationwide. That decision was later upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, leading the Trump administration to issue a new order that it hoped could better stand legal challenges.

The set of states had argued that the two orders were essentially the same and that the first restraining order should still apply, while the government claimed that the two were substantially different, an argument Robart seemed to agree with. His decision was based largely on the fact that his first ruling specifically applied to the original executive order and “should not automatically extend” to the second.

“The court cannot conclude that the policy changes in EO2 are minor or that EO2 represents nothing more than a ‘renumbering’ of policies that the court has already enjoined. Accordingly, the court declines to apply its preliminary injunction concerning EO1 to provisions contained in EO2,” Robart wrote.

{mosads}Trump’s new travel ban, signed last week, was already stopped by a different judge before it could go into effect Thursday. 

A federal judge in Hawaii on Wednesday issued a freeze on the major components of the travel ban as he considers a lawsuit from the state of Hawaii and a Muslim leader, which he ruled stands a likely chance of success. 

Several states have sued to block the order, arguing that it amounts to a discriminatory ban on Muslims and threatens economic harm.

A Maryland-based federal judge issued a second injunction on Thursday, blocking the part of the executive order that halted the government from granting visas to citizens of six predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days.

Trump vowed Wednesday night to appeal the rulings, saying that he would take the case to the Supreme Court.

Trump’s original executive order called for barring citizens from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia from entering the U.S. for 90 days, suspending the entire refugee program for four months and indefinitely blocking Syrian refugees.

The second version, which Trump on Wednesday called “watered down,” removed Iraq from the list, dropped the indefinite ban on Syrian refugees and gave specifics on exemptions to those who already hold certain visas or green cards.