UNITED STATES

Universities support legal challenge to Trump travel ban

A group of 31 US colleges and universities is supporting a legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s restrictions on travel to the United States by refugees and visitors from certain Muslim-majority countries, asserting the executive order would harm their efforts to provide quality education and promote the free exchange of ideas, writes Amanda Scott for Voice of America.

Federal courts have suspended enforcement of Trump’s immigration orders, at least temporarily, but legal action is underway by several states that hope to make the temporary restraining order permanent. The university group, including many of the most prestigious and elite US institutions of higher education, filed a friend-of-the-court brief on 31 March in a federal appeals court that is to hear arguments in the case in May.

Harvard, Yale and all other members of the eastern universities known as the Ivy League, plus renowned schools across the country, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the University of Chicago to Stanford University in California, all joined in the court statement, which seeks to support efforts by Maryland, one of the state governments trying to overturn President Trump’s immigration orders.
Full report on the VoA News site