Story highlights
States' top GOP attorneys are considering lawsuits challenging Obama's immigration overhaul
Texas, Oklahoma attorneys general have said they'll sue, and other states could join them
Virginia's Ken Cuccinelli, who challenged Obamacare, advised them to "take it slow"
Republican attorneys general in several states say they are weighing legal challenges to President Barack Obama’s overhaul of immigration rules.
The man who rose to conservative stardom as the first attorney general to challenge Obama’s health care law in court, Virginia’s Ken Cuccinelli, said they’re in a “powerful position to make the legal assault.”
But, he said, because Obama’s immigration move was an executive order rather than a bill that worked its way through Congress, attorneys general have less time to prepare their moves than he did in 2010.
“The best thing to do there is just to take it slow,” Cuccinelli, who now helms the Senate Conservatives Fund, said Friday. “One of the challenges for lawyers can be explaining first of all, what the legal issue is, and second, its significance. And both of those are important.”
“This shouldn’t be done as a political undertaking, it should be done as a legal undertaking,” he said. “As long as they keep that focus, understanding they have to communicate to people who aren’t lawyers what they’re doing and why, I think they’ll be just fine.”
Texas could play the lead role in challenging Obama’s executive order easing deportation for the undocumented parents of children born in the United States and others. The state’s GOP attorney general, Greg Abbott, who’s just weeks away from replacing outgoing Gov. Rick Perry, said Wednesday night that he’s planning to sue.
In Oklahoma, Attorney General Scott Pruitt promised a lawsuit.
Republicans hammer legal case against Obama
Other elected officials also are considering challenges, as well. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence said his state will take “any available legal actions necessary.” At a Republican Governors Association meeting this week, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker all said they’d consider a lawsuit.
Even Joe Arpaio, the colorful sheriff in Arizona’s Maricopa County, said he’s suing Obama over immigration.
The list could grow, and it’s already populated with Republicans who could enhance their standing among conservatives by hammering a president deeply unpopular with their base.
There are risks, though. Immigration could be a tricky issue for Republicans in 2016, when their opposition to easing deportation rules – especially once Obama is out of office – could alienate Latinos, a rapidly growing group of voters.
Cuccinelli said immigration is “just like Obamacare but with different players. It’s not just some political positive all the time. There will be people who will not appreciate it.”
Read transcript of Obama’s immigration speech
The legal challenge to Obama’s signature health care reform law was the star turn for Florida’s Pam Bondi, who led the multistate battle that reached the Supreme Court.
It also turned Cuccinelli, who had campaigned for office on fighting Obamacare, into a conservative darling – and catapulted him to the Republican nomination in last year’s governor’s race, though he narrowly lost to Democrat Terry McAuliffe.
Cuccinelli’s lawsuit was eventually rejected, but other states had some success with the Supreme Court, which rejected a challenge to the law’s individual mandate but allowed states to opt out of its expansion of the Medicaid program.
Cuccinelli said attorneys general needed to play a “federalist role,” then and now.
“If the AG’s position is this violates the law and the separation of powers, it cannot stand for that reason alone. Whatever anyone may think of immigration, then that’s the job of the attorney general,” he said.
Opinion: Obama’s immigration move is a win
Cuccinelli said there is strength in numbers for attorneys general who, while elected in most states, are usually lower-key lawyers unaccustomed to the spotlight that comes with taking on the White House.
“When one person does something, you look like an outlier,” he said. “And whether it makes sense or not, the states get a certain level of respect from the courts that other people don’t. When you file an amicus brief and you represent a state, the court reads your brief. It is a powerful position to make the legal assault from.”