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New York, NY, March 16, 2017 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today welcomed orders from federal courts in Hawaii and Maryland that blocked nationwide enforcement of the President’s second executive order on refugees.
ADL filed amicus briefs in both the Hawaii and Maryland cases urging the courts to block enforcement of the executive order. The briefs trace America’s history as a nation dedicated to ideals of equality, liberty and justice, and warn against repeating the shameful times in our past when America has turned against those ideals.
“The President’s second executive order on refugees was nothing more than the first Muslim ban with new window dressing,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “The decisions from Hawaii and Maryland are a victory for the rule of law and a clear repudiation of anti-Muslim bigotry.
“America was built on a foundation of religious pluralism and a rejection of religious discrimination,” said John Harris, ADL Legal Affairs Committee Chair and primary author of the ADL brief. “These decisions send a strong message that religious discrimination is impermissible, even - or perhaps especially - when it comes from the highest office.”
If the courts had not blocked the ban, it would have gone into effect today at 12:01 a.m. The executive order would have temporarily banned travel to the U.S. for people from six majority-Muslim countries and would have suspended all refugee resettlement for a period of 120 days.
The law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, PC prepared the brief on behalf of ADL. The law firm Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel served as local counsel in Hawaii, and the law firm Cooley LLP served as local counsel in Maryland.