A federal appeals court in San Francisco has scheduled a hearing on whether to restore President Donald Trump's controversial travel ban, the media reported.
The scheduling was announced on Monday evening, around the same time the Trump administration filed legal briefs with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a federal judge's decision to halt the order blocking entry to the US of refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, The Hill Magazine reported.
The appeals court will hear arguments on Tuesday evening at 6 p.m., with each side getting 30 minutes of argument time conducted over the phone.
The hearing will be live audio streamed on the court's public website. Initially, the court said a recording of the call would be made public after the hearing.
James L. Robart, a federal judge in Seattle, Washington, on February 3, agreed to issue a nationwide restraining order temporarily halting the travel ban.
The appeals court denied a request from the Trump administration for an emergency stay on Sunday, but is expected to rule on whether to allow the immigration policy to remain on hold sometime after the hearing.
If the restraining order is upheld, Trump could ask the Supreme Court to step in.
The case will be heard by Judge William C. Canby Jr., appointed by President Jimmy Carter; Judge Michelle T. Friedland, appointed by President Barack Obama; and Judge Richard R. Clifton, appointed by President George W. Bush.
On Monday, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said the administration stood ready to reinstate the entire ban, the New York Times reported.
"Once we win the case, it will go right back into action," he said.
In his own remarks on Monday, Trump said the US should admit "people that love us and want to love our country and will end up loving our country" and not "people that want to destroy us and destroy our country."
Over 100 tech firms file legal brief against Trump's travel ban
Technology giants, including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter and Uber have filed a legal brief opposing the administration's travel ban, a media report said.
"The move represents a rare coordinated action across a broad swath of the industry -- about a hundred companies in total -- and demonstrates the depth of animosity toward the Trump ban," The Washington Post reported on Monday.
The brief was filed with the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which is expected to rule within a few days on an appeal by the administration after a federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order putting the entry ban on hold.
The brief comes at the end of a week of nationwide protests against the plan as well as a flurry of activity in Silicon Valley -- a region that has many immigrants who are responsible for many innovations in the world.
Companies backing the filing also include Lyft, Pinterest, Yelp, Square, Reddit, Kickstarter, Github, Glassdoor, Box, Mozilla, Dropbox, Twilio, Zynga, Medium, Pinterest, and Salesforce, the report said.
On Monday, Elon Musk's Tesla and Space X also joined the legal brief. However, Amazon appears to have stayed out.
The filing said that the entry ban, which barred individuals from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US for at least 90 days and suspended the US refugee programme, was discriminatory.
