The Obama administration has insisted that the president’s executive action on immigration was within his authority, but attorneys general in 17 states think otherwise. On Wednesday, Texas attorney general and governor-elect Greg Abbott filed a lawsuit in U.S. district court in the Lonestar State as part of a coalition of other states.
“The President is abdicating his responsibility to faithfully enforce laws that were duly enacted by Congress and attempting to rewrite immigration laws, which he has no authority to do — something the President himself has previously admitted,” Abbott said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. The 16 other state are Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
The lawsuit states that the president violated the Constitution’s “Take Care” clause as well as failed to follow the Administrative Procedure Act’s guidelines for implementing new policies, including a comment period to outline the changes’ benefits.
One state absent from the lawsuit is Oklahoma, whose attorney general Scott Pruitt vowed to take legal action against President Obama prior to the president’s announcement of the policy last month. Pruitt told NRO the day after the president’s address that he expected to file a lawsuit in the coming weeks.