President Donald Trump

A suit in New York over the Trump administration's decision to wind down the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy will proceed after the Brooklyn federal judge overseeing a pair of overlapping suits declined on Thursday to grant the Justice Department's request to dismiss the claims.

On the most substantial portion of the allegations—that the decision to shutter the program was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act and motivated by discriminatory animus, in violation of the Constitution—U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the Eastern District of New York found the plaintiffs had raised sufficient facts to allow the suits to go forward.

Garaufis did provide the Trump administration some relief. He narrowed the claims raised by the plaintiffs, one a private individual joined by immigrant defense organizations in one suit and the other a number of state plaintiffs led by New York's attorney general in another. The court found claims that the rescission decision should be seen as a legislative rule, rather than a statement of policy, and thus a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, unavailing.

Garaufis also dismissed claims over the Department of Homeland Security's policy regarding the collection of personal information from DACA recipients because the department said it wasn't using the information to deport participants. But it left the door open for action if facts can be shown to the contrary.

As with numerous other suits against the Trump administration, the president's public statements, specifically disparaging Latinos and Mexicans on the campaign trail, were put front and center in the court's justification for the suit going forward.

According to the judge, Trump's statements during the campaign represent “allegations … sufficiently racially charged, recurring, and troubling as to raise a plausible inference that the decision to end the DACA program was substantially motivated by discriminatory animus.”

Garaufis acknowledged that looking at Trump's prior statements as proof of his later actions did represent a “fraught” issue, noting that “[o]ld statements may say little about what lay behind a later decision.”

Additionally, he found that an equal protection claim brought against the president raises “difficult questions” about whether, and for how long, an executive action “disproportionately affecting a group the president has slandered” can be considered “constitutionally suspect.”

Yet, Garaufis reasoned, “The court does not see why it must or should bury its head in the sand when faced with overt expressions of prejudice.” It was reasonable to infer, he said, that a candidate who makes bigoted statements on the campaign trail is likely to take bigoted action when in office.

Garaufis also dismissed the “remarkable argument” put forward by the DOJ that the president can't be liable for the DACA rescission because it was actually an appointee—this case, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security—who ultimately makes the call on policy. Other “more mundane contexts” had produced case law putting the liability for discrimination on a “biased individual [who] manipulates a non-biased decision-maker into taking discriminatory action,” he noted.

A spokesperson for the DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's spokeswoman Amy Spitalnick said the office was pleased with Garaufis' decision.

“[W]e look forward to continuing our litigation to protect Dreamers and New York's businesses, economy and institutions,” she said.

Spokespeople for the Batalla Vidal plaintiffs did not respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit still has a number of claims generated by litigation in the district pending.