Justice Department lawyers asked the Supreme Court to allow authorities to continue a block on many refugees covered by President Donald Trump's travel ban. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo Trump takes travel-ban exemption fight back to SCOTUS Administration gives up for now on blocking grandparents, but keeps battling to stem refugee flow.

The Trump administration is returning to the Supreme Court in an effort to overturn lower court rulings crimping the application of President Donald Trump's travel ban executive order.

Justice Department lawyers asked the high court Monday to allow authorities to keep up a block on many refugees covered by Trump's ban.


However, the administration threw in the towel for now on efforts to insist that grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins of U.S. citizens be covered by the ban despite the Supreme Court ordering an exemption for close family members.

A federal judge in Hawaii ruled against the federal government on both issues in July. Last week, a 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel declined to disturb that ruling.

The dispute taken to the justices Monday addresses how much of the travel ban can be enforced until the Supreme Court rules on the broader issues. The justices are scheduled to hear arguments Oct. 10 on a pair of cases related to the ban.

At issue are about 24,000 refugees who have been assigned to U.S. refugee resettlement agencies but not yet given final approval to depart for the U.S.

U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson agreed with the State of Hawaii and refugee advocates that the assignment to an American agency was a sufficient connection to a U.S. entity to qualify for the temporary travel-ban reprieve the Supreme Court ordered in June when it agreed to decide the broader legality of the travel ban.

Justice Department lawyers argued against that interpretation, noting that it would fill the pipeline for refugee applicants and essentially nullify the partial stay the high court granted in June in an apparent compromise.

"The Ninth Circuit's decision renders the June 26 stay functionally inoperative," Acting Solicitor General Jeff Wall argued in the filing Monday. "It makes no sense to exempt from....the Order the roughly 24,000 refugees for whom assurances exist, based on the happenstance that they had reached a later stage of the administrative process in which the government routinely obtains assurances."

Justice Anthony Kennedy issued a temporary stay Monday afternoon that essentially freezes the status quo. Without such an action, Watson's order would have kicked in Tuesday, with the administration required to dramatically increase its admission of refugees.

Kennedy ordered Hawaii's attorneys to respond by noon Tuesday and said the temporary stay will remain in place pending further order from him or the full court.

The revised travel ban Trump issued in March suspends issuance of U.S. visas to residents of six majority-Muslim countries for 90 days and halts admission of refugees from across the globe for 120 days.

Those clocks, which began running in late June, may have contributed to the administration's decision to give up on enforcing the travel ban against the broader set of relatives given a reprieve by the lower courts. Due to court rulings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins have been immune from the ban for the past couple of months, so those seeking visas may have been aware of the legal fight and have already gotten them.

And with the six-country visa ban set to run out Sept. 24, few visa applicants would be affected even if the courts narrowed the family exemption.

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In the Monday filing, Wall noted that the Supreme Court previously declined a request from the federal government to block the family-related aspect of Watson's order. "In addition, the lower courts’ line-drawing error in that regard is less stark than their nullification of both the Order’s refugee provisions and this Court’s stays permitting implementation of those provisions," he wrote as he explained why the family issue was being dropped.

Thousands of refugees could be impacted if the lower court rulings kick in, although the timing there is also uncertain. Refugee admissions are capped by fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Trump could try to block or reduce the admission of refugees after that date by setting that allocation to zero or a low figure.

Obama had set the cap for this year at 110,000, although for budget and capacity reasons a much lower number of refugees were actually expected to be admitted. Trump attempted to lower the cap to 50,000 for this year, but court rulings have effectively blocked that move.

The global refugee halt in Trump's revised executive order runs out in late October, about two weeks after the scheduled oral arguments at the high court. A ruling in the president's favor could empower him to reinstate or extend the travel ban orders or to implement something similar on a permanent basis.

It's also possible that the administration could try to scuttle the legal dispute by declaring the issues moot as a result of the expiration of the key provisions of Trump's orders