The Biden administration has told the justices that it’s dropping the federal government’s defense of the previous administration’s discriminatory “public charge” rule making it easier to deny green cards to working immigrant families, litigants who have fought the policy announced on Tuesday.
The court had last month agreed to a request by the previous administration to review litigation around the policy, which had been found unlawful by lower courts. “But on Tuesday, the Justice Department notified the court that the Biden administration agreed with the local governments challenging the policy that the cases should be dismissed,” NBC News reports. Litigants said the withdrawal clears the way “at last for this unlawful rule to no longer be enforced.”
“The Biden administration has rightly withdrawn the government appeals of appellate court decisions enjoining the Trump DHS’s public charge rule, clearing the way at last for this unlawful rule to no longer be enforced,” the coalition of groups, including Legal Aid Society, Center for Constitutional Rights, Make the Road New York, and African Services Committee, said on Tuesday.
“Immigrant families can now access life-saving health care, food, and housing assistance for which they are eligible without fear that they will lose the chance to obtain lawful permanent residence, because the actions today mean that the harmful Trump public charge rule will again be blocked,” they continued. “The Trump rule erected an invisible wall in the form of a wealth test that discriminated against people on the basis of race as a condition for regularizing their immigration status.”
They noted that families had been “living in fear” under the discriminatory rule—pushed by former White House aide and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller—“despite serving as frontline workers who have been among those hardest hit by COVID-19.” While Washington state Rep. Pramila Jayapal in the earliest weeks of the pandemic got a public concession from unlawfully appointed former Department of Homeland Security Acting Deputy Ken Cuccinelli that the rule wouldn’t punish families seeking care during the pandemic, the fact that it was Cuccinelli doing the reassuring brought little actual reassurance.
“President Joe Biden signaled his intent to change the policy in February, signing an executive order that ordered federal agencies to review the Trump rule,” NBC News continued. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted the administration’s request:
The Biden administration has recently asked the Supreme Court to drop a number of immigration-related cases from the previous administration. The court in February granted Biden administration requests to remove from its calendar cases around the racist and stupid border wall that Mexico never did pay for, and the anti-asylum Remain in Mexico policy. Then late last week, the court granted a request to dismiss several cases around the previous administration’s withholding of federal funds from so-called “sanctuary cities.”
“Local law enforcements’ ability to protect their jurisdictions should never be compromised to push an anti-immigrant agenda,” New York state Attorney General Letitia James said according to The Wall Street Journal. Her state had been among those targeted by the previous administration for limiting cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “We look forward to continuing to work with the administration to ensure state and localities never have to choose between protecting their autonomy and protecting the public’s safety.”
