Gov. Sam Brownback has withdrawn Kansas from the federal refugee resettlement program, but his action “in no way will stop the work of Episcopal Migration Ministries-Wichita . . . in its ministry of helping refugees,” insists Dean Wolfe of the Episcopal Diocese of Kansas.
NASHVILLE, Tennessee–On Tuesday, the Tennessee General Assembly declared it will sue the federal government over its refugee resettlement program on Tenth Amendment grounds. The State Senate passed a resolution authorizing that lawsuit in a 29 to 4 vote one day
The Tennessee General Assembly is on track to sue the federal government over the refugee resettlement program on Tenth Amendment grounds after Senate Joint Resolution 467 cleared its last substantive hurdle in the Tennessee House Finance Committee.
A resolution calling for the state of Tennessee to sue the federal government on Tenth Amendment grounds over its operation of the refugee resettlement program cleared another hurdle Tuesday when it was approved by the State and Local Government Committee on a 7 to 3 vote.
The Tennessee State Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution by a 27 to 5 margin requiring a state lawsuit against the federal government program that is dumping refugees into the Volunteer State.
The state of Tennessee is one step closer to filing a Tenth Amendment lawsuit in federal court to end the United States Refugee Resettlement program in that state.
The state of Tennessee is one step closer to suing the federal government over the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program. Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey filed Senate Joint Resolution 467 (SJR 467) in the State Senate on Thursday.
State Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver (R-Lancaster), the daughter of a refugee from Yugoslavia who came to the United States in 1952 as a twelve-year-old, wants the Tennessee General Assembly to step up if Governor Bill Haslam fails to launch a constitutional challenge to the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program.
GOP presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz is pushing his State Refugee Security Act of 2015 (S. 2363), now before the United States Senate for formal consideration.
The constitutional argument is that the federal government, without the permission of these 12 Wilson-Fish states, has “commandeered” state funds by placing refugees in their states, thereby obligating states to pay Medicaid expenses for the refugees, in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Haslam is apparently off the list of possible plaintiffs—governors of the 12 “Wilson-Fish alternative program” states where non-profit VOLAGS, not state governments, run the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program—the Thomas More Law Center says it is looking to represent in a constitutional legal challenge to the program.
The Thomas More Law Center, a well respected public interest law firm, is ready to file a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the $1 billion a year U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program and is looking for a governor to be the plaintiff in a case that can be filed on short notice.
Though they are officially “non-profit” organizations, Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, and several other Christian organizations are profiting from lucrative contracts with the federal government to resettle refugees in the United States. Of the 100,000 refugees resettled in the United States in 2014 under the Refugee Resettlement program, an estimated 40 percent were Muslims.
