NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge gave the green light Tuesday to New York’s so-called Green Light Law, rejecting the Trump administration’s bid to stop the state from issuing driver’s licenses to people without showing they are in the country legally.
U.S. District Judge Anne M. Nardacci in Albany ruled that the Republican administration — which challenged the law under President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration — failed to support its claims that the state law preempts federal law or that it illegally regulates or discriminates against the federal government.
The Justice Department sued the state over the law in February, naming Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, as defendants. At a news conference announcing the lawsuit, US Attorney General Pam Bondi accused the officials, both Democrats, of prioritizing “illegal aliens over American citizens.”
“As I’ve said from the beginning, our laws protect the rights of all New Yorkers and keep our communities safe,” James said in a statement Friday. “I will always stand up for New Yorkers and the rule of law.”
A message seeking comment was left for the Department of Justice.
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 matter of policy. Rather, she said in a 23-page opinion, it was to assess whether the Trump administration’s arguments established that the law violates the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, which gives federal laws precedence over state laws.
The administration, she wrote, “failed to state such a claim.”
The Green Light Law was enacted in part to improve public road safety, as people without licenses sometimes drove without one, or without passing a road test. The state also makes it easier for holders of such licenses to obtain auto insurance, thereby reducing crashes involving uninsured drivers.
By law, people who do not have a valid Social Security number can submit alternative forms of identification that include valid passports and driver’s licenses issued in other countries. Applicants must still obtain a permit and pass a road test to qualify for a “standard driver’s license.” It does not apply to commercial driver’s licenses.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit sought to strike down the law as “a frontal attack on federal immigration laws, and the federal authorities who administer them.” Highlighted a provision that requires the State Commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles to inform people who are in the country illegally when a federal immigration agency has requested their information.
In 2020, during Trump’s first term, his administration sought to pressure New York to change the law by prohibiting anyone from the state from enrolling in trusted traveler programs, which means they spend longer amounts of time going through airport security lines.
The governor at the time, Andrew Cuomo, offered to restore federal access to driving records on a limited basis, but said he would not allow immigration agents to see lists of people who had applied for special licenses available to immigrants who could not prove legal residency in the United States.
In the lawsuit dismissed on Tuesday, the administration argued that it could be easier to enforce federal immigration priorities if federal authorities had unfettered access to New York driver information. Nardacci, echoing a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in an earlier challenge to the county clerk’s law, wrote that such information “remains available to federal immigration authorities” through a legal court order or judicial warrant.