Scheduled arguments Wednesday afternoon on the federal government’s motion to substitute the United States for President Donald Trump in a defamation suit were abruptly adjourned after a Department of Justice attorney was barred from entering Manhattan federal court.

Stephen Terrell, an attorney in the civil division-torts branch of the Justice Department, moved for adjournment approximately an hour before the hearing was set to begin, explaining in a letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan that he traveled to the hearing from his home in Virginia and was barred entry because Virginia is among “the jurisdictions from which the State of New York bans travel.”