Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Tennessee sues federal government over refugee resettlement, citing 10th Amendment

Tennessee is the nation's first state "to sue the federal government over refugee resettlement on the grounds of the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution," Joel Ebert reports for The Tennessean. A suit filed Monday claims the feds have violated the amendment "that says the federal government possesses only the powers delegated to it by the U.S. Constitution and that all other powers are reserved for the states."

"Other states have sued the federal government over refugee resettlement but on different legal grounds," Ebert writes. "The charge that the federal government is not complying with the Refugee Act of 1980, based on the 10th Amendment, makes Tennessee's lawsuit the first of its kind."

"The lawsuit argues that the federal government has unduly forced states to pay for the refugee resettlement program," Ebert writes. "The federal refugee act was designed to create a permanent procedure for the admission of refugees into the U.S. The lawsuit asks the court to force the federal government to stop resettling refugees in Tennessee until all costs associated with the settlement are incurred by the federal government."

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