giving people driver\u2019s licenses<\/a> without having them prove they are in the country legally.<\/p>\nU.S. District Judge Anne M. Nardacci in Albany ruled that the Republican administration \u2014 which challenged the law under President Donald Trump\u2019s crackdown on illegal immigration \u2014 had failed to support its claims that the state law usurps federal law or that it unlawfully regulates or unlawfully discriminates against the federal government.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department sued the state over the law in February, naming Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state\u2019s attorney general, Letitia James, as defendants. At a news conference announcing the lawsuit, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi accused the officials, both Democrats, of prioritizing \u201cillegal aliens over American citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I said from the start, our laws protect the rights of all New Yorkers and keep our communities safe,\u201d James said in a statement Friday. \u201cI will always stand up for New Yorkers and the rule of law.\u201d<\/p>\n
A message seeking comment was left for the Justice Department.<\/p>\n
Nardacci, appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, wrote that her job was not to evaluate the desirability of the Green Light Law as a policy matter. Rather, she said in a 23-page opinion, it was to assess whether the Trump administration\u2019s arguments established that the law violates the U.S. Constitution\u2019s Supremacy Clause, which gives federal laws precedence over state laws.<\/p>\n
The administration, she wrote, has \u201cfailed to state such a claim.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Green Light Law was enacted partly to improve public safety on the roads, as people without licenses sometimes drove without one, or without having passed a road test. The state also makes it easier for holders of such licenses to get auto insurance, thus cutting down on crashes involving uninsured drivers.<\/p>\n
Under the law, people who don\u2019t have a valid Social Security number can submit alternative forms of ID that include valid passports and driver\u2019s licenses issued in other countries. Applicants must still get a permit and pass a road test to qualify for a \u201cstandard driver\u2019s license.\u201d It does not apply to commercial driver\u2019s licenses.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department\u2019s lawsuit sought to strike down the law as \u201ca frontal assault on the federal immigration laws, and the federal authorities that administer them.\u201d It highlighted a provision that requires the state\u2019s Department of Motor Vehicles commissioner to inform people who are in the country illegally when a federal immigration agency has requested their information.<\/p>\n
In 2020, during Trump\u2019s first term, his administration sought to pressure New York into changing the law by barring anyone from the state from enrolling in trusted traveler programs, meaning they would spend longer amounts of time going through security lines at airports.<\/p>\n
The governor at the time, Andrew Cuomo, offered to restore federal access to driving records on a limited basis, but said he wouldn\u2019t let immigration agents see lists of people who had applied for the special licenses available to immigrants who couldn\u2019t prove legal residency in the U.S. The administration ultimately restored New Yorkers\u2019 access to the trusted traveler program after a brief legal fight.<\/p>\n
In the lawsuit rejected Tuesday, the administration argued that it could be easier to enforce federal immigration priorities if federal authorities had unfettered access to New York\u2019s driver information. Nardacci, echoing a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in a county clerk\u2019s earlier challenge to the law, wrote that such information \u201cremains available to federal immigration authorities\u201d through a lawful court order or judicial warrant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By MICHAEL R. SISAK NEW YORK \u2014 A federal judge gave a green light Tuesday to New York\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":472003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,1370,728,405,403,5296,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-472002","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115783745324444488","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}