This article may contain commentary
which reflects the author’s opinion.
A federal judge has ruled against the Trump administration’s request to stop New York’s so-called Green Light Law. The law lets the state give driver’s licenses to people even if they can’t show that they are in the country legally.
In Albany, U.S. District Judge Anne Nardacci said that the Trump administration did not back up its arguments that some parts of the state law are overridden by federal law, illegally control the federal government, or illegally treat the federal government differently.
In February, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against the state law, claiming that it is unconstitutional because it goes against the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which says that federal laws are more important than state laws. They also asked the court not to let the statute be enforced.
The state of New York was named in the lawsuit, along with Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democratic Attorney General Letitia James as defendants.
In the lawsuit, the DOJ questioned three specific parts of the law. One of these parts did not allow the DMV to share a person’s records or information with “any agency that primarily enforces immigration law or to any employee or agent of such agency” without a court order or warrant.
Another rule said that anyone who has access to DMV records has to promise they won’t share the information. The part of the law that is being argued about required the DMV to let a person know within three days of getting a request for information or records from federal immigration authorities.
Nardacci admitted that the lawsuit is about immigration enforcement, which is a hot-button political issue. However, she stressed in the ruling that her job is not to judge the policy, but to see if the plaintiffs proved it violates the Supremacy Clause.
“The Court’s role is not to evaluate the desirability of the Green Light Law as a policy matter, but rather to assess whether Plaintiff’s well-pled allegations, accepted as true, establish that the challenged provisions of the Green Light Law violate the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause,” she wrote.
“The Court concludes that Plaintiff has failed to state such a claim,” she added
When she filed the lawsuit, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that Hochul and James were putting “illegal aliens over American citizens.” This is because the disputed state law prevents federal officers from enforcing immigration laws from seeing illegal immigrants’ criminal driving records during traffic stops.
The DOJ’s lawsuit called the law “a frontal assault on the federal immigration laws, and the federal authorities that administer them.” They based this claim on the fact that the law requires the DMV commissioner to tell people who are in the country illegally when a federal immigration agency asks for their information.
The lawsuit also said that the Trump administration’s immigration plans might be easier to carry out if federal officials could see New York’s driver information at any time.
The Green Light Law went into effect in 2019, but after a US Customs and Border Protection agent was killed during a shootout after a traffic stop with a German national in Vermont near the northern US-Canada border in January, there was a renewed call for criticism of the law.
“Any information that can help law enforcement stay safe as they conduct their duties has pretty much been taken away with this Green Light Law,” Hector Garza, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, told Fox News at the time.
“What [the Green Light Law] does, is that it prevents law enforcement agents from getting any type of information in regards to any registrations that the state has,” Garza added. “For example, before we engage in traffic stops, typically law enforcement will always conduct a vehicle registration check to see if there’s any warrants to see if that person is considered armed and dangerous.”
