Justice Sonia Sotomayor handed down a ferocious dissent Friday after the Supreme Court lifted the final barrier to a Trump administration rule that withholds green cards from immigrants dependent on government services.
At issue in Friday’s case was the so-called public charge rule. Federal immigration law provides that immigrants should not receive permanent legal status if they are likely to become “a public charge.” The government has traditionally defined a public charge as a person dependent on a cash assistance program. The Trump administration’s rule expands that definition to include other forms of non-cash assistance like food stamps.
The vote was five to four and tracked familiar ideological lines. The Court did not give an explanation for its decision, as is typical of such orders. In dissent, Sotomayor said the Trump administration has been bringing cases to the Supreme Court prematurely by exploiting procedural rules.
“Claiming one emergency after another, the government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases, demanding immediate attention and consuming limited Court resources in each,” Sotomayor wrote. “And with each successive application, of course, its cries of urgency ring increasingly hollow.” – READ MORE
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