The U.S. government Monday responded to Hawaii’s legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban affecting six predominantly Muslim countries, saying assertions that the order will hurt the state’s tourism industry and universities are mere speculation.

The government formally asked U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson to deny a request for a temporary restraining order in a brief filed in advance of Wednesday’s oral arguments in Honolulu.

Also on Monday, 13 states and Washington, D.C., lined up on Hawaii’s side, filing a brief supporting the case but stopping short of joining as a co-plaintiff. The document joins nine other briefs also filed in support of the effort from organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, National Asian Pacific American Bar Association and Southern Poverty Law Center.

Elsewhere Monday, Washington state was joined by California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Oregon in asking a federal judge in Seattle to block Trump’s revised executive order, arguing that it imposes essentially the same discriminatory actions against Muslims that were found in the original order.

Scheduled to take effect Thursday, Trump’s order restricts immigration from Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen and suspends all refugee admissions for 120 days.

Hawaii, which has no other state as co-plaintiff, is seeking a nationwide injunction, arguing that the order violates both the Constitution and other U.S. laws.

In its filing, the U.S. government asserts that the president’s action is consistent with the executive’s constitutional authority over foreign affairs and national security. The law, it says, expressly gives the president power to restrict any class of aliens in the national interest.

The executive order affects only certain foreign nationals from countries that Congress and the previous administration had already determined pose an elevated risk of terrorism, the government says, and the restrictions will apply only for a short period, giving the new administration a chance to review the nation’s screening and vetting procedures to ensure they adequately detect terrorists.

“For the past 30 years, every president has invoked his power to protect the nation by suspending entry of categories of aliens. As a legal matter, the order is no different,” the brief says.

With an explicitly religion-­neutral text, the order does not discriminate on the basis of religion and applies only to aliens outside the country who lack a visa, and includes a waiver process to help reduce any undue hardship, according to the document.

Joshua Wisch, special assistant to state Attorney General Doug Chin, declined to respond to the filing Monday, saying, “We’ll limit our response to what we put in our reply brief, which will be filed (today).”

Last week Chin said in a statement, “We all want safety and security in our state. But discrimination against people based on national origin or religion is a very dark path we must never accept. Respectfully, the new order fails to fix the initial defect.”

The state’s amended complaint says the ban not only discriminates against Muslims, but will hurt Hawaii’s tourism, its economy and the ability of universities and private businesses to recruit students and employees.

Joining Hawaii in its complaint is co-plaintiff Ismail Elshikh, imam of the Muslim Association of Hawaii, whose mother-in-law, from Syria, faces uncertainty about whether she can travel here.

In its brief, the government dismisses Elshikh’s claim as invalid because his mother-in-law has not been denied a waiver. “Until that happens, neither she nor Elshikh has suffered any injury fairly traceable to the order.”

In their brief filed in the case Monday, Illinois, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia, plus the District of Columbia, declare their support for Hawaii because they all benefit from immigration and international travel.

“Today, California joined 13 sister states in submitting an amicus brief in the action filed by Hawaii Attorney General Doug Chin in opposing the Trump Muslim travel ban,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Monday in a statement. “We do so for the same reason that this morning we entered the litigation commenced by Washington state to challenge the Trump administration’s constitutional overreach.

“Liberty and democracy are not free,” Becerra added. “As the latest iteration of the Trump Muslim travel ban illustrates, those cherished values can be hijacked unless we are vigilant and steadfast. That’s what we intend to be.”