Minnesota is joining a coalition of 16 states that filed a federal lawsuit Monday to block President Donald Trump’s plan to build a border wall without permission from Congress, arguing that…
Minnesota is joining a coalition of 16 states that filed a federal lawsuit Monday to block President Donald Trump’s plan to build a border wall without permission from Congress, arguing that the president’s decision to declare a national emergency is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit, brought by states with Democratic governors — except for one, Maryland — seeks a preliminary injunction that would prevent the president from acting on his emergency declaration while the case plays out in the courts.
“President Trump, who has been unable to persuade Congress and the American people that a wall is necessary, is harming the people of Minnesota by forcing this constitutional crisis. I have joined this lawsuit because I cannot allow him to do that,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a news release Monday.
The complaint was filed in the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of California, a San Francisco-based court whose judges have ruled against an array of other Trump administration policies, including on immigration and the environment.
Accusing the president of “an unconstitutional and unlawful scheme,” the suit says the states are trying “to protect their residents, natural resources, and economic interests from President Donald J. Trump’s flagrant disregard of fundamental separation of powers principles engrained in the United States Constitution.”
The complaint, filed by the attorneys general of nearly a third of the states and representing tens millions of Americans, immediately became the heavyweight among a rapid outpouring of opposition to the president’s emergency declaration. In the White House Rose Garden on Friday, Trump announced that he was instituting a national emergency at the U. S.-Mexico border because Congress did not provide the money for a wall that has stood as one of the most enduring promises from his 2016 campaign.
Several nonprofit organizations already have gone to court or announced plans to sue. And protesters took to the streets in several cities Monday. Across from the White House, demonstrators held neon-colored letters that spelled “Power grab.”
“You wouldn’t expect to celebrate Presidents’ Day this way, but we do what you got to do,” California’s Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra, leader of the states coalition, said Monday in an interview.
