By David Rivkin and Elizabeth Price Foley

December 7, 2016, in the Los Angeles Times

Several cities and public universities have vowed to resist President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to deport undocumented criminals by doubling down on sanctuary policies. In response, Trump has pledged to curtail federal funding for sanctuary providers. Activists, predictably, are crying foul, and some legal scholars, such as Harvard’s Noah Feldman, have even claimed that such a response would be unconstitutional.  

But whatever one thinks about Trump’s strategy, it almost certainly would pass muster at the Supreme Court.Several cities and public universities have vowed to resist President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to deport undocumented criminals by doubling down on sanctuary policies. In response, Trump has pledged to curtail federal funding for sanctuary providers. Activists, predictably, are crying foul, and some legal scholars, such as Harvard’s Noah Feldman, have even claimed that such a response would be unconstitutional.  

Feldman and others point to New York v. United States (1992) and Printz v. United States (1997), in which the Supreme Court concluded that the federal government cannot conscript state or local officials to carry out federal law. The federal government must enforce its own laws, using federal personnel. So when state or local police arrest immigrants who are present in the country illegally, they are under no obligation to deport them, as deportation is the responsibility of the federal government alone. 

This “anti-commandeering” doctrine, however, doesn’t protect sanctuary cities or public universities — because it doesn’t apply when Congress merely requests information. For example, in Reno v. Condon (2000), the Court unanimously rejected an anti-commandeering challenge to the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, which required states under certain circumstances to disclose some personal details about license holders. The court concluded that, because the DPPA requested information and “did not require state officials to assist in the enforcement of federal statutes,” it was consistent with the New York and Printz cases.

It follows that, consistent with the anti-commandeering doctrine, Congress can require state, local or university police to tell federal agents when they arrest an immigrant present in the country illegally. Read more »

By DAVID RIVKIN, JOHN YOO, Sept. 6 2015 in the Los Angeles Times

Donald Trump’s call to end birthright citizenship has roiled the Republican presidential primary. Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Marco Rubio embrace the traditional view that the Constitution bestows citizenship on anyone born on U.S. territory. Ben Carson and Rand Paul agree with Trump that Congress could dismantle birthright citizenship by itself. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz acknowledges birthright citizenship but seeks a constitutional amendment to abolish it.

Conservatives should reject Trump’s nativist siren song and reaffirm the legal and policy vitality of one of the Republican Party’s greatest achievements: the 14th Amendment. Under its text, structure and history, anyone born on American territory, no matter their national origin, ethnicity or station in life, is a U.S. citizen.

Although the original Constitution required citizenship for federal office, it never defined it. The 14th Amendment, however, provides that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” Congress did not draft this language to alter the concept of citizenship but to affirm American practice dating from the origins of our republic.

With the exception of a few years before the Civil War, the United States followed the British rule of jus solis (citizenship defined by birthplace) rather than the rule of jus sanguinis (citizenship defined by that of parents), which still prevails in much of continental Europe. As the 18th century English jurist William Blackstone explained: “The children of aliens, born here in England, are generally speaking, natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such.” Read more »

By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR., ELIZABETH PRICE FOLEY, Los Angeles Times, June 29, 2015

In King vs. Burwell, the Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act permits individuals who purchase insurance on the federal exchange to receive taxpayer subsidies. Though the King decision pleases the ACA’s ardent supporters, it undermines the rule of law, particularly the Constitution’s separation of powers.

Under Section 1401 of the ACA, tax credits are provided to individuals who purchase qualifying health insurance in an “[e]xchange established by the State under Section 1311.” Section 1311 defines an exchange as a “governmental agency or nonprofit entity that is established by a State.”

As Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent notes, one “would think the answer would be obvious” that pursuant to this clear language, subsidies are available only through state-established exchanges.

Yet the King majority ignored what the ACA actually says, in favor of what the Obama administration believes it ought to have said, effectively rewriting the language to read “exchange established by the State or federal government.”

Scalia observes that “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’” Like Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass,” the majority claims that when the court is asked to interpret a word, “it means just what [the court chooses] it to mean — neither more nor less.”
Read more »