Ind. ACLU files lawsuit against Gov. Pence over Syrian refugee resettlement
AG Zoeller a couple of years ago “strong armed” the IN medical licensing board to past emergency regulations mandating urine testing for chronic pain pts.. ACLU sued the bureaucrats and won in court… Imagine that… an attorney not aware that this emergency regulation was a violation of the 4th Amendment.. unreasonable search and seizure. There is 6.6 million people in Indiana.. and averages suggest that there is some 2 + million chronic pain pts. How many of those are being discriminated against and being denied their needed medications ? I wonder how many Syrian refugees are wanting to settle in Indiana that are going to be affected one way or the other. I am sure that it does not approach TWO MILLION…
INDIANAPOLIS (WHAS11) – A week after governors in 28 different states said they would suspend the resettlement of Syrian refugees, the ACLU of Indiana is now suing Governor Mike Pence.
The reason – to try and stop the governor’s attempts to refuse Syrian refugees entrance into the Hoosier State.
The suit claims Pence’s actions violate the United States Constitution and federal law.
“There is no border around the state of Indiana that prevents people from entering our state who may move freely within the United States,” ACLU of Indiana legal director Ken Falk said. “Decisions concerning immigration and refugee resettlement are exclusively the province of the federal government, and attempts to pre-empt that authority violate both equal protection and civil rights laws and intrude on authority that is exclusively federal.”
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Exodus Refugee Immigration, Inc., a nonprofit corporation that receives federal money through the state’s office of refugee programs
Filed under: General Problems
Bob…thank you for the insightful analysis. I have an interest in Constitutional Law and this legal theory, history and practice that you detailed is something that I was unfamiliar with. This will definitely go into my “database” of “dirty tricks that we think that only other countries do to their citizens.” I did not realize that Tricky Dick had to go to these lengths to allow the DEA the power to operate as they do.
I realize that this is not the subject at hand, but it stands to reason, based on what you have described here, that a state could neutralize the DEA and it’s activities within it’s boundaries simply by having it’s chief executive, aka the governor, rescind the deputation of the DEA agents within it’s borders. Would not this same idea be applicable to agents of BATFE, IRS, FBI, et.al of the other Federal Law Enforcement agencies?
Not to nitpick, but the AG has a valid point. The reason that there exists a State Office of Refugee Programs, is that the federal government has no constitutional authority to make welfare payments to any individual or corporation…the Constitution imposes upon them the opposite duty, “to protect the general welfare”. In plain English, that means it’s forbidden to take stuff from the taxpayers and give it to one’s political cronies, because that diminishes the general welfare to make those cronies richer. So there’s a huge problem with the federal government, importing refugees and paying them to live here…which is that it’s illegal to use taxpayers’ money to do it.
How does a politician get around this obstacle?
Richard Nixon figured it out.
Each of the 50 States has the Police Power, that in English law belonged to the Crown. A State may respond to any crisis as it wishes, to preserve the public order and safety.
So what Nixon did, was pay money to the states, if THEY agreed to do something that Nixon himself could not do.
For example, DEA agents are federal officers but they are deputized by the states in which they are assigned. If a defendant’s lawyer is smart enough to object, on Constitutional grounds, that for example, there’s no constitutional authority for the Controlled Substances Act, and the indictment against his client must therefore be quashed as unenforceable, DEA agents simply assert the state-law powers they got, when a state deputized them, and cite some state law prohibiting the alleged drug offense. What’s problematic about Nixon’s concept, is that by bribing the 50 states with money, to pass laws that Congress cannot legally pass, Congress is operating outside of any legal boundaries. In theory, this could be challenged in court. However, the only parties with standing, to bring the challenge, are the states themselves, and they already took the payoff money.
There’ve been cases where a Nixonian payoff did not persuade a state to sell out it’s residents’ rights for cash. Arizona v California, a lawsuit demanding an equal share of the water flowing down the Colorado River that comprises their common border, proceeded into the Supreme Court, in spite of Nixon’s California heritage and willingness to throw money around. Arizona’s AG saw it is, “How do Arizona taxpayers benefit from the federal money, if they’re not allowed to have water?”. He sued the case out, and the Justices ruled in Arizona’s favor. California had to share the water.
Colorado, which collected $150 million in tax revenues from legalized recreational cannabis, clearly has grounds to sue the DEA for damages, if DEA raids any cannabis farms or dispensaries in Colorado…this, more than any other factor, is responsible for the kid-glove treatment that Coloradans have gotten from DEA.
Now that we’ve seen how federalism works, let’s take another look at that refugee resettlement case.
Indiana is demanding authority it does not legally possess. No state can interfere with interstate commerce. A resident of another state, is free to enter Indiana and buy or sell things, get employment, or move there.
However, it controls the flow of welfare money to any refugees sent there by the federal government, because the federal government must pay Indiana off, to make payments to refugees, as it lacks constitutional authority to diminish the general welfare by giving stuff away to a particular person or group.
So the veiled threat here, is that Indiana’s AG could sue the US and demand that it stop building any refugee facilities, on grounds that it has no authority to spend money for this purpose.
However, veiled threats have no place in the law. If the pols in Indianapolis are serious, they should bring the constitutional issue into court. They do not have actual authority to obstruct interstate commerce or compel refugees from Syria who are in the US legally, to leave Indiana.
Just as the DEA has no constitutional authority to force Colorado to stop growing cannabis.