WASHINGTON, DC, United States (AFP) — The Supreme Court dealt President Donald Trump’s Government a fresh setback Wednesday, saying its controversial travel ban cannot be applied to grandparents and other close relatives of people living in the United States — for now.

The court accepted a Hawaii federal judge’s ruling last week that the Trump Administration had too narrowly defined what constitutes “close family relationships” to determine exceptions to the ban on travellers from six mainly Muslim countries — Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

That left in place Judge Derrick Watson’s wider definition, which includes grandparents, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and cousins of people living in the United States.

But in its brief order, the court backed the Trump administration by staying the part of Watson’s ruling that would have expanded exemptions to its 120-day ban on all refugees.

The order said the Supreme Court’s ruling is temporary, pending a federal appeals court’s review of the issues.

The Supreme Court itself was partially the source of the dispute, having ruled in late June that the 90-day travel ban, aimed at better screening out potential security risks, can be broadly enforced for travellers from the six countries “who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States”.

Days later, the Government interpreted that to mean that only “close family” was exempted — which it defined as the parents, spouses, children, sons- and daughters-in-law, siblings and step- and half-siblings of people in the United States.

Hawaii, one of several states fighting the travel ban since Trump first announced it in January, filed a court motion arguing that grandparents and grandchildren were by all measures also “close family”.