Top US court asks Hawaii respond by Tuesday to Trump travel ban motion

WASHINGTON: The Supreme Court has given Hawaii until Tuesday to respond to the White House's motion to block a ruling exempting grandparents of people living in the US from the president's travel ban, the court's public information office said Saturday.
In a court filing Friday, the Donald Trump administration requested the nation's highest bench overturn Thursday's decision by a Hawaii federal judge, which limited the reach of the executive order temporarily barring refugees and other travellers from six predominantly Muslim countries.
After months of legal wrangling over the controversial measure, the Supreme Court handed Trump a partial victory in June, saying that the ban could go into effect but people with a "bona fide relationship" to a US person or entity were exempt.
In its list defining that category, the White House had said the ban would still apply to grandparents, but US Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii ruled that exclusion was unfair.
He expanded the list of "bona fide" relatives to include them as well as grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins of people in the United States.
Trump's March 6 executive order bars visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90 days, and refugees for 120 days.
The administration insists the policy is necessary to keep violent extremists out of the country.
The Supreme Court has said it would hear oral arguments over whether the ban violates the US Constitution after it returns for a new session in October. — AFP