New York State Attorney General Letitia James addressing media outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 23, 2019. Photo by Diego Radzinschi

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule, which makes it easier for the federal government to deny green cards to immigrants who may rely on public assistance based on their income. 

The lawsuit from New York is the latest in a series of federal challenges to the rule, including one from California and the National Immigration Law Center. 

James said at a press conference in front of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where the suit was filed, that the new rule finalized by the Trump administration places an undue burden on low-income immigrants.

“For generations, the United States has been a haven for immigrants seeking opportunity and upward mobility and the Trump administration’s unlawful reinterpretation of the public charge rule turns this history on its head, excluding hundreds of thousands of immigrants,” James said.

“It’s really, critically important that we understand we welcome to these shores immigrants of all economic statuses,” she continued.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday includes language that can be described as more direct than the comments made by James and other public officials at the press conference in Manhattan. It alleges the new rule is designed, specifically, to exclude immigrants of color from the United States.

“The Final Rule implements this Administration’s explicit animus against immigrants of color; it is the means by which immigrants from what this Administration has described as ‘shithole countries’ will be excluded to the benefit of white, wealthy Europeans,” the suit said.

That was a reference to a comment reportedly made last year by President Donald Trump, who assigned that label to a handful of countries from Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean. Trump said that, instead, the United States should seek more immigrants from European countries.

New York state is leading the litigation, and was joined on the complaint by Connecticut, Vermont, and New York City. 

The coalition argued in the lawsuit that the new rule ignores the historical intent of federal lawmakers, and decades of case law that runs contrary to the change. That precedent, the suit claimed, has held that immigrants who use basic, noncash benefits are not considered public charges because they’re not primarily dependent on the government.

The concept of a “public charge,” the lawsuit argued, was instead intended by Congress to refer to someone who has become, or is likely to become, completely dependent on the government in the long term. That’s not the case here, where the benefits given to immigrants are minimal, and temporary, the suit said.

“By ignoring the amount of public benefits received by an immigrant, and treating any receipt of benefits as evidence that somebody will become a public charge, DHS exceeds its rulemaking authority,” the suit said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has framed the rule as a way to prevent immigrants from depending on public resources while living in the United States. It was finalized by the federal agency earlier this month, and immediately met with criticism from immigrant-advocacy groups and political opponents of the Trump administration.

The concept of rejecting legal status to immigrants who would be deemed a so-called public charge isn’t new for the federal government, but the new rule sets stricter limits for applicants. 

Under the new rule, immigrants who receive one or more designated public benefits for an aggregate of 12 months during a three-year period would be more likely to be deemed a public charge. Those designated benefits include Medicaid, food stamps, and housing subsidies.

Attorneys for New York state argued in the suit filed Tuesday that the federal government missed the point of providing those benefits to immigrants in the first place.

Those benefits, James argued, were partly intended to help immigrants with legal status escape poverty and achieve a more sustainable way of life in the U.S. Those individuals, because of a number of factors, often face additional challenges in getting on their feet.

“The rule penalizes immigrants for their use of vital non-cash benefit programs and again these are programs designed to encourage upward mobility, promote self-sufficiency, and reduce poverty and high-cost emergency room visits,” James said.

The lawsuit also claimed the Trump administration is taking advantage of the public charge inquiry through the new rule to target immigrants of color, immigrants with disabilities, and low-income immigrants. The rule, the suit claimed, will chill the use of public benefit programs by those immigrants and consequently impact the health of those individuals. 

That would ultimately hinder the economy in areas with large immigrant populations, such as New York, according to the state. Those communities would be more likely to experience higher unemployment, housing instability, and other detrimental consequences of rejecting public benefit programs. 

“And this chilling effect, and the concomitant increase in homelessness, food insecurity, and undiagnosed and untreated medical issues, will force state and local governments to bear severe financial and public health consequences,” the lawsuit said.

James said her office will seek a temporary restraining order against the rule before it’s scheduled to go into effect on Oct. 15.

The litigation challenged the rule, according to the complaint, over alleged violations of the federal Administrative Procedure Act and the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment.

Other state attorneys general, who’ve also filed lawsuits challenging the rule, have brought litigation based on the same, or similar, claims in recent days.

New York state’s lawsuit is the fifth filed in the past week against the rule, the rest of which have been filed in California and the state of Washington. That means the suit from New York is the first legal challenge to branch outside the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

A spokesman for DHS said it’s the agency’s policy not to comment on pending litigation.

Jacqueline Thomsen contributed to this report.

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