Apple, Spotify, Kickstarter, Snap, Twitter and Google have banded together with 97 other tech companies to challenge Donald Trump’s immigration ban.

The executive order – since dubbed the ‘Muslim ban’ – affects all travellers who have nationality or dual nationality of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The order bans their travel for 90 days and suspends all refugees from entering for 120 days.

Thankfully, the wrath of Silicon Valley has gotten behind a lawsuit against the order by Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson.

Image: Trump, who thinks Silicon Valley is his favourite derogatory term

The tech giants have tapped Washington lawyer Andrew Pincus (of Mayer Brown LLP) to write an amicus brief, which is really just a fancy term for additional information provided by a ‘friend’ of the court, aka, someone the court will allow to advise on the matter.

The amicus brief, which was was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Sunday, reads:

“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.”

Elsewhere the brief hits the court with this truth-bomb:

“Immigrants are leading entrepreneurs. Some of these businesses are large. Immigrants or their children founded more than 200 of the companies on the Fortune 500 list […] Collectively, these companies generate annual revenue of $4.2 trillion, and employ millions of Americans.”

Granted, Trump’s order was temporarily blocked by a federal judge last week, and Australia and New Zealand has sought an exemption by asking for “preferential treatment” for citizens with dual nationality, but Australia’s music industry could be affected.

Millie Millgate, Executive Producer at Australia’s export music market development initiative SOUNDS AUSTRALIA, had some crucial advice for all delegates, participants and attendees headed to SXSW next month:

“It’s all so unknown and deeply concerning, especially to think this is only the beginning!” she told Tone Deaf last month. “We have already been notified by both industry professionals and artists, that are being pulled up in advance of travel and needing to go in for vetting interviews.

“Anybody travelling for SXSW or for any reason for that matter needs to be ultra-aware as it seems like they are really making it up as they go along. What’s also troubling is that even with official court rulings the individual Processing Officers have always played by their own rules, so any artists travelling at this time just need to be smart, aware and keep their wits about them.

“I’d also suggest allowing for significantly longer wait times in and out of airports and if you have the luxury of arriving in to destinations earlier, then take that day ‘just in case’.

“We’d also encourage anybody being denied or questioned to let us know so that we can feed it through to US Lawyers at the frontline of discussions.”

See below for the full 97 tech companies who signed the brief (courtesy Forbes):

  1. AdRoll, Inc. 2. Aeris Communications, Inc. 3. Airbnb, Inc. 4. AltSchool, PBC 5. Ancestry.com, LLC 6. Appboy, Inc. 7. Apple Inc. 8. AppNexus Inc. 9. Asana, Inc. 10. Atlassian Corp Plc 11. Autodesk, Inc. 12. Automattic Inc. 13. Box, Inc. 14. Brightcove Inc. 15. Brit + Co 16. CareZone Inc. 17. Castlight Health 18. Checkr, Inc.
  2. Chobani, LLC 20. Citrix Systems, Inc. 21. Cloudera, Inc. 22. Cloudflare, Inc. 23. Copia Institute 24. DocuSign, Inc. 25. DoorDash, Inc. 26. Dropbox, Inc. 27. Dynatrace LLC 28. eBay Inc. 29. Engine Advocacy 30. Etsy Inc. 31. Facebook, Inc. 32. Fastly, Inc. 33. Flipboard, Inc. 34. Foursquare Labs, Inc. 35. Fuze, Inc. 36. General Assembly 37. GitHub 38. Glassdoor, Inc. 39. Google Inc. 40. GoPro, Inc. 41. Harmonic Inc. 42. Hipmunk, Inc. 43. Indiegogo, Inc.44. Intel Corporation 45. JAND, Inc. d/b/a Warby Parker 46. Kargo Global, Inc.47. Kickstarter, PBC 48. KIND, LLC 49. Knotel 50. Levi Strauss & Co. 51. LinkedIn Corporation 52. Lithium Technologies, Inc. 53. Lyft, Inc. 54. Mapbox, Inc. 55. Maplebear Inc. d/b/a Instacart 56. Marin Software Incorporated 57. Medallia, Inc. 58. A Medium Corporation 59. Meetup, Inc. 60. Microsoft Corporation 61. Motivate International Inc. 62. Mozilla Corporation 63. Netflix, Inc. 64. NETGEAR, Inc. 65. NewsCred, Inc. 66. Patreon, Inc. 67. PayPal Holdings, Inc. 68. Pinterest, Inc. 69. Quora, Inc. 70. Reddit, Inc. 71. Rocket Fuel Inc. 72. SaaStr Inc. 73. Salesforce.com, Inc. 74. Scopely, Inc. 75. Shutterstock, Inc. 76. Snap Inc. 77. Spokeo, Inc. 78. Spotify USA Inc. 79. Square, Inc. 80. Squarespace, Inc. 81. Strava, Inc. 82. Stripe, Inc. 83. SurveyMonkey Inc. 84. TaskRabbit, Inc 85. Tech:NYC 86. Thumbtack, Inc. 87. Turn Inc. 88. Twilio Inc. 89. Twitter Inc. 90. Turn Inc. 91. Uber Technologies, Inc. 92. Via 93. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 94. Workday 95. Y Combinator Management, LLC 96. Yelp Inc. 97. Zynga Inc.

Get unlimited access to the coverage that shapes our culture.
to Rolling Stone magazine
to Rolling Stone magazine