Casa De Md., Inc. v. Trump

971 F.3d 220

CASA DE MARYLAND, INC.; Angel Aguiluz; Monica Camacho Perez, Plaintiffs – Appellees,

v.Donald J. TRUMP, in his official capacity as President of the United States; Chad Wolf, in his official capacity as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security; U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II, in his official capacity as Acting Director, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Defendants – Appellants.

Immigration Reform Law Institute, Amicus Supporting Appellants.

104 Businesses and Organizations; American Academy of Pediatrics; Maryland Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics; Virginia Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics; American Medical Association; Maryland State Medical Society; American College of Physicians; American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists; Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law; United States House of Representatives; Legal Historians; Center for Reproductive Rights ; Members of Congress; Judy Chu, Chair of the CAPAC; Adriano Espaillat, CHC Whip; Yvette D. Clarke, Chair of the CBC Immigration Task Force; Joaquin Castro, Chair of the CHC; Karen Bass, Chair of the CBC; Pramila Jayapal, Chair of the CAPAC Immigration Task Force; Barbara Lee, Co-Chair of the CAPAC Healthcare Task Force; Nonprofit Anti-Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Organizations; Immigration Law Professors; Fiscal Policy Institute; Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration; Public Justice Center, Amici Supporting Appellees.

No. 19-2222

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: May 8, 2020

Decided: August 5, 2020

ARGUED: Gerard Joseph Sinzdak, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellants. Jonathan Backer, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER, Washington, D.C., for Appellees. Adam A. Grogg, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D.C., for Amicus Curiae. ON BRIEF: Joseph H. Hunt, Assistant Attorney General, Daniel Tenny, Joshua Dos Santos, Civil Division, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C.; Robert K. Hur, United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellants. Amy L. Marshak, Joshua A. Geltzer, Mary B. McCord, Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER, Washington, D.C., for Appellees. Michael M. Hethmon, Lew Olowski, IMMIGRATION REFORM LAW INSTITUTE, Washington, D.C., for Amicus Immigration Reform Law Institute. Paul W. Hughes, Michael B. Kimberly, Matthew A. Waring, MCDERMOTT WILL & EMERY LLP, Washington, D.C., for Amici 104 Businesses and Organizations. Susan M. Krumplitsch, Elizabeth Stameskin, Priyamvada Arora, COOLEY LLP, Palo Alto, California, for Amici American Academy of Pediatrics; Maryland Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics; Virginia Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics; American Medical Association; Maryland State Medical Society; American College of Physicians; American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Richard L. Revesz, Jack Lienke, Max Sarinsky, INSTITUTE FOR POLICY INTEGRITY AT NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, New York, New York, for Amicus Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. Robert M. Loeb, Thomas M. Bondy, Peter E. Davis, Emily Green, Washington, D.C., Rene Kathawala, Jessica Edmundson, Allison Epperson, New York, New York, M. Todd Scott, ORRICK, HERRINGTON & SUTCLIFFE LLP, San Francisco, California; Douglas N. Letter, General Counsel, Todd B. Tatelman, Principal Deputy General Counsel, Megan Barbero, Josephine Morse, Adam A. Grogg, William E. Havemann, Office of General Counsel, UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D.C., for United States House of Representatives. Alexandra Wald, COHEN & GRESSER LLP, New York, New York; Elizabeth B. Wydra, Brianne J. Gorod, Dayna J. Zolle, CONSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY CENTER, Washington, D.C., for Amici Legal Historians. Jenny Ma, Pilar Herrero, Amy Myrick, Elyssa Spitzer, CENTER FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS, New York, New York, for Amicus Center for Reproductive Rights. Gare Smith, Kristyn DeFilipp, Andrew London, Emily J. Nash, FOLEY HOAG, LLP, Boston, Massachusetts; Justin Lowe, Wendy Parmet, HEALTH LAW ADVOCATES, INC., Boston, Massachusetts, for Amici Health Law Advocates, Inc. and Other Organizations Interested in Public Health. Nilda Isidro, Amanda Burns, Christine Armellino, New York, New York, Caroline H. Bullerjahn, GOODWIN PROCTOR LLP, Boston, Massachusetts, for Amici Members of Congress Judy Chu, Chair of the CAPAC; Adriano Espaillat, CHC Whip; Yvette D. Clarke, Chair of the CBC Immigration Task Force; Joaquin Castro, Chair of the CHC; Karen Bass, Chair of the CBC; Pramila Jayapal, Chair of the CAPAC Immigration Task Force; Barbara Lee, Co-Chair of the CAPAC Healthcare Task Force, et al. Paul J. Lawrence, Alanna E. Peterson, PACIFICA LAW GROUP LLP, Seattle, Washington, for Amici Nonprofit Anti-Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Organizations. Harry Lee, Mary Woodson Poag, Johanna Dennehy, STEPTOE & JOHNSON LLP, Washington, D.C., for Amici Immigration Law Professors. Monisha Cherayil, Sally Dworak-Fisher, Tyra Robinson, PUBLIC JUSTICE CENTER, Baltimore, Maryland, for Amicus Public Justice Center. Sadik Huseny, Brittany N. Lovejoy, Joseph C. Hansen, Tess L. Curet, Alexandra B. Plutshack, LATHAM & WATKINS LLP, San Francisco, California, for Amici Fiscal Policy Institute & Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, et al.

Before WILKINSON, NIEMEYER, and KING, Circuit Judges.

Reversed and remanded by published opinion. Judge Wilkinson wrote the opinion, in which Judge Niemeyer joined. Judge King wrote a dissenting opinion.

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

The Immigration and Nationality Act ("INA") says that any alien who is "likely at any time to become a public charge is inadmissible." 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(4)(A).¹ Congress has included some version of a "public charge" provision in the nation's immigration laws since 1882, but it has never defined the term, instead leaving its implementation to the executive branch. Recently, the Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") sought via rulemaking to define "public charge" as an alien who was likely to receive certain public benefits, including many cash and noncash benefits, for more than 12 months in the aggregate over any 36-month period ("DHS Rule" or "Rule"). The district court here enjoined the Rule nationwide.

In this case, statutory interpretation meets the separation of powers. To invalidate the Rule would visit palpable harm upon the Constitution's structure and the circumscribed function of the federal courts that document prescribes. Striking the Rule would also entail the disregard of the plain text of a duly enacted statute, all in an area where the Constitution commands "special judicial deference" to the political branches in light of the intricacies and sensitivities inherent in immigration policy. Fiallo v. Bell , 430 U.S. 787, 793, 97 S.Ct. 1473, 52 L.Ed.2d 50 (1977). Finally, we are asked here to endorse a particular remedy—a nationwide injunction of the Rule—that reaches expansively beyond any proper conception of the judicial role.

The above does not mean that the plaintiffs' view of the public charge provision is definitively wrong. Nor does it mean that the government's view of the public charge provision is definitively right. Rather, the public charge provision has led for almost a century and a half a long and varied life, with different administrations advancing varied interpretations of the provision, depending on the needs and wishes of the nation at a particular point in time. To be sure, the public charge provision ties alien admissibility to prospective alien self-sufficiency. But within that broad framework, Congress has charged the executive with defining and implementing what can best be described as a purposefully elusive and ambiguous term. Congress has assiduously resisted giving the term the kind of fixed and definite meaning that the plaintiffs to this lawsuit seek, and we are reluctant to step in and perform that task ourselves, thus transferring primacy in national immigration policy from the democratically accountable branches where it has long been thought to reside.

There is a further and daunting obstacle to invalidating the Rule. In the course of prolonged litigation in the lower federal courts, the Second and Seventh Circuits declined to stay injunctions issued by trial courts precluding enforcement of the Rule. See New York v. Dep't of Homeland Sec. , No. 19-3591, 2020 WL 95815 (2d Cir. Jan. 8, 2020) ; Order, Cook Cty., Illinois v. Wolf , No. 19-3169 (7th Cir. Dec. 23, 2019). The Supreme Court thereupon granted the government's emergency request to stay the preliminary injunctions, an action which would have been improbable if not impossible had the government, as the stay applicant, not made "a strong showing that it was likely to succeed on the merits." See Wolf v. Cook Cty., Illinois , ––– U.S. ––––, 140 S. Ct. 681, 206 L.Ed.2d 142 (2020) ; Dep't of Homeland Sec. v. New York , ––– U.S. ––––, 140 S. Ct. 599, 206 L.Ed.2d 115 (2020) ; see also Nken v. Holder , 556 U.S. 418, 434, 129 S.Ct. 1749, 173 L.Ed.2d 550 (2009). We may of course have the technical authority to hold that, notwithstanding the Supreme Court's view, the plaintiffs are likely after all to succeed on the merits of their challenge. But every maxim of prudence suggests that we should decline to take the aggressive step of ruling that the plaintiffs here are in fact likely to succeed on the merits right upon the heels of the Supreme Court's stay order necessarily concluding that they were unlikely to do so. Such a step would require powerful evidence that the Supreme Court's stay was erroneously issued. Such evidence is absent here.

It is surprising that the dissenting opinion makes light of the Supreme Court's action in these parallel cases. See Dissenting Op., pos...