It looks like Donald Trump didn’t avoid another lawsuit after all.
In response to Trump’s decision to rescind DACA yesterday, the Attorneys General of 15 states are suing Trump in an attempt to force the Administration to keep the program. The same AGs in July wrote a letter to Trump explaining why DACA is constitutional, urging him to keep the program, and saying that they stood ready to defend it.
As Xavier Becerra, Attorney General of California said today:
President Trump has turned his back on hundreds of thousands of children and young Americans who came forward and put their trust in our government. But in terminating DACA, the Trump administration has also violated the Constitution and federal law.
Said Eric Schneiderman, Attorney General of New York:
President Trump’s decision to end the DACA program is cruel, gratuitous and devastating to tens of thousands of New Yorkers — and I will sue to protect them. My job is to protect all the residents of New York — no matter where they come from … and I will use every legal tool I have available to make sure they get the opportunity to live the American dream, just like millions of New York immigrants before them.
The fifteen plaintiff states are New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia. The lawsuit is, in one sense, Democratic states’ response to Texas and eight other states which threatened to sue Trump is he did not end DACA, which helped precipitate the program rescission that Trump announced yesterday.
Legal experts have said that the case could be an uphill climb, and may hinge on rules that govern federal rulemaking. A law called the Administrative Procedure Act says that the public must be given ample time and notice to comment on substantive federal rulemaking, and the Attorneys General are likely to argue that this requirement applies to the unwinding of DACA.
A separate lawsuit was announced yesterday from the National Immigration Law Center, Make the Road New York, and Batalla Vidal, a 26-year-old DACA recipient.
View the complaint from today’s lawsuit below:
