By Bill Chappell , Mark Katkov
The Justice Department is challenging rulings that blocked President Trump’s travel ban against six Muslim-majority nations. Here, demonstrators pray during a traditional Ramadan evening meal that was held outside of Trump Tower in New York Thursday. Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
President Trump’s administration filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday night seeking to reverse rulings by lower courts in Hawaii and Maryland that blocked a temporary ban on travel to the United States from six majority-Muslim countries.
The Trump administration says the Constitution gives the president “broad authority to prevent aliens abroad from entering this country when he deems it in the nation’s interest.”
Federal judges issued a nationwide temporary restraining order and injunction that blocked the travel ban in March, after separate legal challenges were mounted by the International Refugee Assistance Project (which filed its suit in Maryland) and by the state of Hawaii.
Last month, the Maryland district court’s preliminary injunction was upheld by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, with the chief judge writing that the travel ban “drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.”
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in the administration’s request for a stay pending appeal to lift the Hawaii injunction on May 15, but it has not yet ruled.
Trump and the Justice Department are asking the Supreme Court to review the case in the 4th Circuit, and to place stays on the injunctions that resulted from both cases. The administration made three separate filings with a total of more than 880 pages late Thursday.