Dozens of tech companies have joined forces to publicly condemn President Donald Trump’s most recent immigration ban proposal, filing an amicus brief earlier this week claiming the ban “would inflict significant and irreparable harm on U.S. businesses and their employees.”
Why aren’t Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon joining the new anti-travel ban legal brief?
Most signed a brief a month ago but haven’t signed this new one.
Drew Angerer / Getty
The move was reminiscent of a similar amicus brief filed in February by nearly 100 tech companies protesting Trump’s first immigration ban proposal.
But this new brief, which decries Trump’s renewed plan that has since been blocked by a federal judge, is lacking support from some of tech’s biggest players, including Facebook, Apple and Google, all three of which signed last month’s brief. Amazon is also missing; last month CEO Jeff Bezos said the company would devote resources to lobbying against the ban and the company has backed Washington state’s related lawsuit against Trump.
But now those four companies, and others, are missing from a new amicus brief. And that feels odd. The travel orders are very similar, and both have been blocked by federal judges.
Why are tech’s biggest players stepping away from this brief after supporting the last one? We don’t know. The companies won’t provide explanations.
A spokesperson for Facebook tells Recode it does not plan to join the latest amicus brief, but declined to specify why. Twitter and Snapchat were also on the first brief, but not this one. Company spokespeople for both companies declined to comment.
Uber said it would eventually join the current brief.
We have reached out to Apple, Google and Amazon in hopes of an explanation and will update if we hear from them.
Revised Immigration Ban Amicus Brief by TheVerge104 on Scribd
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
