Supreme Court allows Trump administration to enforce ‘public charge’ immigration restriction
By: By Shannon Bream, Bill Mears
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Supreme Court will allow the Trump administration to enforce, for now, its "public charge" immigration restriction , lifting a pair of preliminary injunctions issued by federal judges.
The Monday order followed a 5-4 split vote that divided the court’s conservatives and liberals.
At issue is the administration’s rule issued in August that would restrict immigrants entering the United States if the government believes they will rely on public assistance, such as housing or health care benefits. Lower federal courts had blocked the policy from being implemented while the issue is being litigated.
The court’s liberal justices, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, would have blocked the regulation’s enforcement.
After losing at the lower courts, the Justice Department asked the high court to intervene, allowing temporary enforcement until the issue is resolved on the merits. The states of Connecticut, Vermont, and New York, as well as New York City and immigrant rights groups had brought the suit.
The Trump Justice Department has gone repeatedly to the Supreme Court to lift court-ordered injunctions, bypassing the traditional appellate process.
Justice Neil Gorsuch -- supported by Justice Clarence Thomas -- wrote a separate concurrence, criticizing the increased reliance on nationwide injunctions to block government policies.
“The real problem here is the increasingly common practice of trial courts ordering relief that transcends the cases before them. Whether framed as injunctions of 'nationwide,' 'universal,' or 'cosmic' scope, these orders share the same basic flaw—they direct how the defendant must act toward persons who are not parties to the case,” Gorsuch wrote.
While a “public charge” inadmissibility standard has long been part of U.S. immigration law, it had not been formally defined by statute. The rule, announced by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in August, defines a “public charge” as an immigrant who received one or more designated benefits for more than 12 months within a 36-month period.
“The principle driving it is an old American value, and that’s self-sufficiency,” USCIS Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli told Fox News in an interview last year. “It’s a core principle -- the American Dream itself -- and it’s one of the things that distinguishes us, and it's central to the legal history in the U.S. back into the 1800s.”
Those benefits that would be designated included Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), as well as most forms of Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps. The rule expands the number of benefits that can be considered from interim guidance issued in 1999.
The public charge rule has faced fierce opposition from immigrant activists, as well as many Democrats -- who have opposed measures to limit welfare for immigrants, while also calling for the extension of various forms of government aid to illegal immigrants as well.
“This policy is yet another way for the Trump administration to hurt immigrants," said Claudia Center, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Disability Rights Program, said Monday. "It enshrines the false stereotype that people with disabilities do not contribute to our society. Families will suffer. Congress has repeatedly declared that disability discrimination violates federal law. This rule must be stopped.”
The chairman of the Democratic National Committee, DNC Chair Tom Perez, slammed the ruling.
“It’s sickening to see the United States Supreme Court rubber-stamp Trump’s extreme, anti-immigrant, xenophobic agenda,” he said. “The conservative justices of the court are allowing the Trump administration to penalize those seeking help and close the door on their aspirations to become a part of and give back to this country as American citizens or residents.”
The case is Department of Homeland Security v. State of New York and Make the Road New York (19a785).
Shannon Bream
Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
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The same 4 progressive judges still voting against the Constitution.
Rules of civility apply
They were taking benefits that should be reserved for Citizens only, that is paid for by taxpayers
When my great grandparents came to the U.S., they either made it on their own or with assistance from the community. There is NOTHING in any of the immigration laws that state legal or illegal aliens will be given "hand-outs" from the government until they can get on their own two feet. In fact, the laws actually state that the individuals must not be a burden on the system. Where this person from the ACLU is coming up with her "reasoning" that, through the reduction/elimination of "Disability Aid" will have all of the immigrants - well, she obviously went to a different law school that interprets existing law from dream law.
The court really has to step in and put the kibosh on district courts entering nationwide injunctions.
Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas said Monday that district court judges have been issuing nationwide injunctions much more often.
They called on their colleagues to review the practice, which they said has spread "chaos for the litigants, the government, the courts, and all those affected by these conflicting decisions."
"Bring me your poor tired huddled masses" Strike That!
Another hater of US Law.
The US tax payer is not a tit to be sucked off endlessly by non US citizens.
Sorry, no forever free rides allowed.
You don't pay taxes to the government ?
Not a law - just a plaque at the foot of a statue and based on a poem - not law.
And to immigration enthusiasts, those words aren’t mere poetry, but scripture for how America defines itself.
In the wake of President Donald Trump’s executive orders cracking down on migration from some Muslim-majority countries and other hard-line measures in relation to immigration, liberals have deployed Lazarus’s words ad nauseam to argue how un-American Trump’s policies supposedly are.
This argument is all too common when immigration is debated in America, with those who employ the poem for the purpose of declaring it is apart of our national creed to forever leave our door open for whomever wants to come to our shores. Lazarus’s words go from just some poem to a text that’s equivalent to the Declaration of Independence in the eyes of liberals.
That’s simply not the case.
Lazarus was neither a Founding Father nor a towering figure in American history. Her words have never been law and her poem is not attached to the Constitution. It’s simply the expression of one 19th century socialist. The poem wasn’t even placed on the Statue of Liberty when the monument was unveiled in 1886, which of course was a gift from France to the United States.
Teddy Roosevelt — who served as president when Lazarus’s poem earned a plaque on the Statue in 1903 — exhorted, “There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all.”
They keep acting like Trump is doing something new when all he is doing trying to enforce existing laws and policies.
On second thought, maybe that is new.