On Friday, February 21, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on Friday night in a case that contested the president’s “public charge” rule, which critics have called a “wealth test” for legal immigrants.
As J. Edward Moreno wrote on Feb. 22 in The Hill, “The policy in question, the Immigration and Nationality Act, would make it harder for immigrants who are “likely at any time to become a public charge” to obtain green cards. The policy discourages legal immigrants in the process of obtaining permanent legal status or citizenship from using public assistance, including Medicaid, housing vouchers and food stamps. The case heard by the court, Wolf v. Cook County, sought to reject the policy’s effect in Illinois. The district court filed a preliminary injunction, which temporarily halted the policy in the state and sent the case to the Supreme Court. On Friday, the five conservative justices ruled in favor of the stay, while the liberal justices opposed it.”
As Moreno wrote on Friday, “The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in January to lift a nationwide injunction imposed by a federal judge in New York while the case played out in appeals court. Last week, Solicitor General Noel Francisco sent a request asking the court to do the same for an injunction imposed by an Illinois district court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, issued a dissenting opinion in Friday's ruling, accusing the court of having a tendency to rule in favor of the administration without critically examining the cases. The Trump administration first introduced the rule in August and was immediately met by opposition from immigration advocates.”
And, as Robert Barnes wrote in The Washington Post on Friday, “Although legal challenges will continue on the merits of the policy in lower courts, the justices voted 5 to 4 to remove the last remaining judicial order blocking the new standards from going into effect while those battles play out. Critics say the rules, which the administration plans to begin enforcing Monday, replace decades of understanding and would place a burden on poor immigrants from non-English-speaking countries,” Barnes wrote. “A judge had blocked the administration from implementing the new standards in Illinois, and the Supreme Court’s decision dissolves that order. As is common in such emergency applications, the majority did not explain its reasoning.”
As Barnes noted, “By the same 5-to-4 vote last month, the court had gotten rid of an injunction imposed by a judge in New York that blocked the changes elsewhere in the country. The court’s four liberal justices dissented then and Friday, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the court was violating its own rules about when to step into the legal process.” “It is hard to say what is more troubling: that the government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the court would grant it,” Sotomayor wrote.
A Barnes noted, “The rules establish new criteria for who can be considered dependent on the U.S. government for benefits—'public charges,’ in the words of the law—and thus ineligible for green cards and a path to U.S. citizenship. They were proposed to start in October but were delayed by the lower-court decisions. Under the new policy, immigrants would be suspect if they are in the United States legally and use public benefits—such as Medicaid, food stamps or housing assistance—too often or are deemed likely to someday rely on them.”
National hospital associations have been vocal in opposing the “public charge” rule. When last month, on January 27, the Supreme Court had voted to lift a district court-imposed injunction on the rule, the American Hospital Association (AHA) noted on its website on that day that “The U.S. Supreme Court today voted 5-4 to lift a nationwide injunction imposed by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York preventing the Department of Homeland Security’s public charge final rule from taking effect while legal challenges to the rule proceed. The Supreme Court decision does not address the merits of whether the rule, which would limit the ability of legal immigrants to adjust or extend their immigration status or gain full citizenship based on their receipt of public benefits, is valid, and the lawsuits against the rule continue. The rule was supposed to go into effect in October 2019, but it has not been implemented.”
The AHA’s report noted that “The AHA and five other national hospital groups recently filed a friend-of-the court brief in the 9th Circuit in support of California’s challenge to the rule. The brief notes, when immigrants perceive enrollment in public programs to place their status at risk, they are less likely to enroll their children in those programs, even if their children are U.S. citizens not subject to a public-charge determination. The brief adds that U.S. citizens, including 6.7 million citizen children, are projected to be "hardest hit" by the rule.”
And the association quoted a section of the amicus brief that stated that "These are not abstract numbers, but real people who will be forced to forego public benefits to which they are legally entitled. And they will endure worse health outcomes, loss of prescription medication, increased rates of poverty and housing instability, and impaired development of their children. Although the Public Charge Rule will have the greatest impact on immigrant communities, the hospitals that serve them will also be affected. Coverage losses will lead to sicker immigrant populations and increased emergency-room visits, resulting in more unnecessary uncompensated care for hospitals and limiting hospital resources for expanding access to health care and other community services. Congress could not have intended these results,” the amicus brief had stated.
