Lawsuits Challenging Trump's Muslim Ban Pile Up

Following U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, and halting refugees altogether, a number of lawsuits have been filed.

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The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, first took the case to court and won an emergency stay against that order last week, and the Department of Homeland Security has since vowed to defy that ruling.

Now four states have joined the legal battle against the travel ban. Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Washington state are all legally challenging it, citing the violation of the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of religious freedom.

Massachusetts contended the restrictions run afoul of the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits religious preference.

"At the bottom, what this is about is a violation of the Constitution," said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, as reported by Reuters.

The state will be supporting a lawsuit filed in a Boston federal court by two Iranian men, both lecturers at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. A federal judge blocked the government from expelling those men from the country and halted enforcement of the order for seven days.

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Attorneys in New York and Virginia are also filing similar lawsuits in their respective federal courts.

"As we speak, there are students at our colleges and universities who are unable to return to Virginia," Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring told reporters. "This is not an action I take lightly, but it is one I take with confidence in our legal analysis."

The advocacy organization Oxfam has also joined ACLU and Commonwealth of Massachusetts in a lawsuit against the executive order.

“As a Boston-based global organization with a diverse workforce operating in more than 90 countries around the world, including five of the seven countries affected by the executive order, we are joining this lawsuit because our ability to address some of the worst humanitarian crises around the globe is severely jeopardized,” said Raymond C. Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America in a statement.

“Oxfam is proud to stand with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the ACLU of Massachusetts as a plaintiff in this case.”