Many aspects of the refugee resettlement program force states and local governments to continue to accept refugees even if they choose not to participate.
Last March, the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) initiated a lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of the Tennessee legislature, charging the refugee resettlement program imposes unconstitutional unfunded mandates, requiring states to pay for resettlement whether they participate in the federal program or not. For a year, the sides engaged in legal maneuvers while the judge dawdled.
This March, despite multiple Supreme Court rulings that the federal government cannot compel states to pay for unfunded federal mandates, the judge dismissed the case. He claimed the state of Tennessee, while fully responsible for financing the state’s share of resettlement program costs, did not have standing to bring the suit.
Many aspects of the refugee resettlement program force states and local governments to continue to accept refugees even if they choose not to participate in the program, and pay for a laundry list of services to those refugees once resettled. The lawsuit focused specifically on the requirement for the state to pay exorbitant Medicaid costs or risk losing up to $7 billion in federal Medicaid reimbursements, an amount equal to 20 percent of the entire state budget.
In his 43-page decision, the judge ruled that, according to Tennessee law, only the Tennessee attorney general had the authority to sue, but would not have standing anyway because the state had not first attempted to gain relief through an administrative appeal directly to the federal government. (Tennessee’s attorney general and governor had declined to back the suit.) Thus the state would be put in the impossible position of having to first lose some or all of that $7 billion before it could sue.Read the rest from James Simpson HERE at The Federalist
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