A federal appeals court has been asked to decide whether the federal government can force states to pay for programs they don’t want.
The dispute, under appeal to the full U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is over a supposedly optional refugee program organized by the federal government.
But the case could have impact beyond the refugee issue, if Congress effectively is given authority over state budgets.
Lawmakers in Tennessee informed the federal government they were withdrawing their state from the program. But Washington ignored them, assigning the responsibility for settling refugees to Catholic Charities of Tennessee and ordering the state to pay the group for its operations.
The Thomas More Law Center is representing the state in the case, and its chief counsel, Richard Thompson, said it has “enormous jurisprudential consequences, not only on the issue of the federal refugee resettlement program, but on the ability of Congress to force states to pay for future bizarre, fantastical, unwanted programs as proposed by current Democrat candidates without any recourse to the courts.”
Democratic candidates have proposed spending programs such as free college, paying off college loan debt and free medical care.
Tennessee officially withdrew from the federal refugee resettlement program in 2007, but Washington, “to this day, continues to commandeer state tax dollars.”
It’s part of the fight over the admission of refugees from war-torn nations in the Middle East that escalated under the administration of Barack Obama.
The case originally was filed on behalf of the state of Tennessee, the Tennessee General Assembly and state legislators Terri Lynn Weaver and John Stevens. It charged that the federal refugee program is a violation of the principles of state sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment.
The Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 was intended to provide states with full federal reimbursement for the costs of resettled refugees. But the reimbursements were reduced and then in 1991 eliminated.
Thomas More argues in a petition for rehearing that a three-judge decision by the 6th Circuit upholding the program violates U.S. Supreme Court precedents.
The lawsuit was filed when the state’s attorney general declined to act.
The petition asks the 6th Circuit’s full bench to consider the question: “Does the Tennessee General Assembly have standing to challenge a regulatory regimen that allows the federal government to siphon dollars from the state treasury ‘at times and in amounts of the federal government’s choosing,’ effectively diluting the legislature’s exclusive power of appropriation?”
The petition to the full panel contends the federal government “is siphoning state funds to pay for a program from which Tennessee has withdrawn, and it can do so on any date and for any amount it wants.”
“As the federal government admitted in its brief, Tennessee’s decision to end participation in the Refugee Resettlement Program had ‘no implications whatsoever’ on Tennessee’s obligation to fund the program. The federal government mandates plaintiffs provide Medicaid to otherwise eligible refugees, or face termination of federal benefits.”
The petition argues that as the federal bureaucracy continues to grow, federal officials “will increasingly look to state budgets as the solution to federal funding deficits.”
“When federal bureaucrats do so in violation of the Constitution, e.g. by coercing states to continue funding under pain of losing 20% of the state budget, state legislators must have the ability to bring suit,” the petition states.
TMLC’s complaint alleges that “the federal government has violated the United States Constitution’s Spending Clause and the Tenth Amendment” by creating legislation and rules that purport to give the federal government authority to commandeer state funds for the refugees.
Since January 2002, the federal government has dispatched more than 19,000 refugees to Tennessee cities and towns. They arrive “in poor health, with no job or English skills, and with children who are placed in public schools and in need of expensive translators and tutors. And without any waiting period they can automatically apply for all welfare programs provided by the state of Tennessee,” TMLC said.
That means the state legislature cannot prepare a balanced budget as required by the state Constitution.
Since the “purely federal program” takes state tax dollars from other programs that benefit deserving Tennesseans, the petition states, the general assembly has been deprived of its right “to spend state funds in the manner the people of Tennessee may – through their elected legislators – deem appropriate.”
Under the U.S. Constitution, the federal government has limited responsibilities and authorities. The Tenth Amendment states that any not specified belong to the states.
Shortly after the case was filed, WND reported tens of thousands of Third World migrants were being settled in more than 300 U.S. cities and towns annually.
