The Trump administration is thinking about next steps after a stinging rebuke from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week.
Among the options — floated by Trump himself — is rewriting or modifying the executive order.
Lawyers at the top tier of government are looking at how to do that, according to two sources close to the process.
“There’s a lot of lawyering going on,” one source said.
One option looks at clarifying or supplementing the executive order to abide by what the appeals court laid out about the due process rights afforded to legal permanent residents and valid visa holders.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the administration is looking at its options.
“We’re going to continue to look at all options legally,” Spicer said. “He has tasked the team to come up with options. If we can craft another executive order or orders that achieve the goal of keeping this country safe, that is something he would pursue.”
The administration wants to continue to fight what they see as an over-broad restraining order and could consider issuing more than one executive order splitting up the various classes of immigrants.
One of the sources indicated that if there were a lesson learned from the first legal go-around it is that a district court judge issued a very broad temporary restraining order halting every key provision — instead of limiting the injunction to one class of plaintiffs.
The administration argues that the states have the weakest argument when it comes to those people who have never stepped foot in US soil.
The source believes that ultimately the administration will prevail on the merits. They don’t plan to immediately go to the Supreme Court, in the next few days aware that the current 4-4 split could hand them a loss.