Shortly after Thursday’s appeals court decision blocking his travel ban, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to fight on. “SEE YOU IN COURT,” he wrote on Twitter.

But which court?

Here is a look at Trump’s options.

Take it to the Supreme Court

Trump could file an emergency application to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to stay the trial court’s ruling blocking his executive order suspending travel from seven mostly Muslim countries. That is the only way for him to try to obtain a very fast ruling. Since Trump has said the court rulings against his travel ban pose an immediate threat to the nation’s security, he might be expected to pursue this strategy.

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If he does, the Supreme Court could act within days. Under its usual practices, it would not hear arguments and would issue a very brief order announcing the outcome with little or no legal reasoning.

Richard J. Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard, said the justices should take a different approach in this case if the administration files an emergency application, recalling that the court heard arguments in very short order when the Nixon administration in 1971 unsuccessfully sought to block The New York Times and The Washington Post from publishing a secret history of the Vietnam War.

“The court should receive briefs from both sides, hear oral argument, deliberate among themselves in person, and then decide,” Lazarus said. “They can do so quickly, as they have done in the past, for example in the Pentagon Papers case.”

Many legal experts say Trump’s chances of success at the Supreme Court, which for a year now has had just eight members, are slim. A 4-4 tie would leave the appeals court ruling in place. It would take five votes to overturn the ruling, and it is unlikely that Trump could obtain the vote of any of the court’s four more liberal justices.

Trump could also seek to file a more conventional petition seeking review of the appeals court’s ruling. That would be more orderly, and it would allow the parties to file detailed briefs attacking and defending the appeals court’s reasoning.

It takes only four votes for the Supreme Court to agree to hear a case this way. Under its ordinary practices, though, a decision on whether to hear the case would probably not come until April, and arguments would not be scheduled until October.

By then, the Supreme Court may be back at full strength if Trump’s nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, is confirmed.

Try again at appeals court

The administration could ask a larger panel of the appeals court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, to rehear the case (the ruling Thursday from a three-judge panel of the court was unanimous). The court has a liberal reputation, but its judges have a wide variety of ideological leanings.

Were the 9th Circuit to grant a petition for rehearing, the case would ordinarily be heard by an 11-member panel, including the circuit’s chief judge and 10 judges chosen at random. It is at least possible that such a panel would rule for Trump.

But this strategy also requires time, and the case would still probably end up in the Supreme Court.

The administration has a second option in the 9th Circuit. It could continue to litigate the case before the three-judge panel.

The panel Thursday set a schedule for submitting briefs in the underlying appeal. (Recall that the question decided Thursday was whether to stay the trial court order and not whether it was correct.) The last of those briefs is due March 29.

Go back down to fight in trial court

Judge James L. Robart, who entered the temporary restraining order, has also set a briefing schedule, on whether he should make his ruling more permanent by issuing a preliminary injunction. The last of those briefs is due Feb. 17.

If the administration were inclined to submit additional evidence justifying the ban, the trial court would be the place to do it. But it is not clear whether there will be further proceedings before Robart on whether he should issue a preliminary injunction.

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On Thursday, just after the 9th Circuit’s ruling, a lawyer for Washington state wrote a letter to Robart saying the appeals court had effectively entered the preliminary injunction.

“In light of the court of appeals decision,” Noah G. Purcell, Washington state’s solicitor general, wrote, “the states assume the district court briefing schedule is no longer applicable. The states will not be filing a preliminary injunction motion and brief in the district court tonight, unless we receive contrary guidance from the district court.”

Start over

Finally, the administration could issue a narrower executive order on a travel ban. That too would probably be promptly challenged in court.

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