97 Tech Companies including Apple, Microsoft and Facebook fight travel ban in court
Silicon Valley companies are stepping a fight with the Trump administration.
On Sunday night, technology giants Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Uber and many others filed a legal brief opposing the administration’s contentious entry ban. 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 order.
The amicus brief was filed with the U.S. 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 late Friday a temporary restraining order putting the entry ban on hold. The brief comes after a week of nationwide protests against the plan — as well as a flurry of activity in Silicon Valley, a region that sees immigration as central to its identity as an innovation hub.
The filing says that the entry ban, which barred individuals from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States for at least 90 days and suspended the U.S. refugee program, is discriminatory.
“The Order represents a significant departure from the principles of fairness and predictability that have governed the immigration system of the United States for more than fifty years,” the brief said. ” … The Order makes it more difficult and expensive for U.S. companies to recruit, hire, and retain some of the world’s best employees. It disrupts ongoing business operations. And it threatens companies’ ability to attract talent, business, and investment to the United States.”
Companies backing the filing also include Lyft, Pinterest, Yelp, Square, Reddit, Kickstarter, GitHub, Glassdoor, Box, Mozilla, Dropbox, Twilio, Zynga, Medium, Pinterest, and Salesforce.