The Trump administration scuttled its short-lived ban on U.S. travel from seven Muslim-majority nations Thursday, with a final rebuke to the judges who blocked it, and promised a new, scaled-back version shortly. But it’s not clear what steps the administration would be willing to take that would satisfy the courts.

Justice Department lawyers, with obvious reluctance, said in a court filing that they would no longer defend the executive order signed Jan. 27 by President Trump that put the ban in place. The decision came a week after a panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge’s decision to suspend the order.

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Michael McConnell, a Stanford constitutional law professor and former federal appeals court judge, said the president should be able to legally restrict travel from nations that pose demonstrated dangers, as long as the government states reasons for the restrictions. But he said even a trimmed-down and fully explained executive order would be a tough sell because the courts are allowing evidence — which McConnell considers irrelevant — that Trump’s underlying intent was to exclude Muslims.

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Stanford’s McConnell disagreed Thursday, saying the Supreme Court has largely rejected evidence of “subjective motivations of the president with respect to national security and foreign affairs.”

While the courts that have considered Trump’s order seem inclined to reject restrictions that can be attributed to religious bias, McConnell said, they ought to uphold a revised order if it clearly excludes legal U.S. residents and visa-holders from the travel ban — an exclusion the Trump administration claims it intended from the outset — and explains why certain countries are being targeted. He said the administration should draw up a separate order to address refugee restrictions.