More states are lining up to challenge the new version of Trump's travel ban

Multiple US states have moved to join Washington state's effort to challenge the new version of President Donald Trump's travel ban, citing protections for their citizens and questions surrounding the constitutionality of the ban.

Washington federal judge James Robart granted Oregon permission to officially join Washington's case, while Tuesday Hawaii was the first state to file a motion against the revised travel ban.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said his state will join Washington's lawsuit, and Massachusetts' Attorney General Maura Healey said her state would be joining fellow states to challenge the ban as well.

The revised travel ban that Trump signed on Monday blocks new visas for people from six majority-Muslim nations: Somalia, Syria, Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Yemen. Iraq, which was listed on the original ban, was excluded in the revised version. The ban will also shut down the US refugee program for 120 days.

Schneiderman asserted in a statement via CBS New York that the revised travel ban is "a Muslim ban by another name. Schneiderman continued, "you're not allowed to discriminate against people based on religion, whether you're discriminating against many or few."

Ferguson who successfully challenged the original travel ban last month, said Washington and Minnesota would ask a federal court if the temporary restraining order that applied to Trump's original executive order can be applied to the revised travel ban as well.

Other states that have filed briefs in support of Washington's initial lawsuit include: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia.

The intent behind the executive order targeting those Muslim countries still remains, and that is unconstitutional," Ferguson told NPR's Robert Siegel on Thurday.

Washington's initial lawsuit, the first to challenge Trump's original ban, argued the ban would hurt state businesses and universities, and was unconstitutional.

Ferguson told reporters Trump's revised ban had "the same illegal motivations as the original." He argued the courts would decide the fate of the revised order, not the president.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said the executive order "has hurt Oregon, its residents, employers, agencies, educational institutions, health care system and economy," the Associated Press reported.

In Hawaii, Attorney General Douglas Chin, a Democrat, said the travel ban conflicted with Hawaii's culture and history.

The state's economy also has a heavy dependence on tourism, which would be negatively affected by the travel ban. Chin pointed out that Trump's new ban comes just after the 75th anniversary of President Franklin Roosevelt's executive order that sent Japanese Americans to internment camps in World War II (February 19th, 1942).

Chin added:

"Sections 2 and 6 of the March 6, 2017 Executive Order violate the Immigration and Nationality Act by discriminating on the basis of nationality, ignoring and modifying the statutory criteria for determining terrorism-related inadmissibility, and exceeding the President's authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act."

A hearing in the Hawaii case is set for March 15, one day before the ban is set to take effect.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has said the White House is "very confident with how [the revised ban] was crafted and the input that was given."

"Defendants have not shown and cannot show that the unlawful discriminatory motives that played a part in the adoption of the first executive order somehow disappeared in adopting nearly identical provisions in the seond executive order," Ferguson said in a Thursday federal court filing.