The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a bid by officials in Florida to sue California and Washington over claims that those states have allowed undocumented immigrants to receive commercial trucking licenses.
Officials in the two states deny the allegation.
The court does not typically give a vote breakdown when it rejects a case nor explain its reasoning, but two of the court’s conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., noted that they would have allowed Florida to bring the case.
The case was prompted by a high-profile fatal crash in Florida in August involving a commercial truck driven by an Indian immigrant.
Three people in a minivan died after an 18-wheeler collided with the vehicle on Florida’s turnpike. The state’s highway safety department accused the truck’s driver, Harjinder Singh, of causing the crash by making an illegal U-turn.
The traffic crash ignited a political fire when the Trump administration highlighted the episode, alleging that Mr. Singh was in the country illegally and had been improperly issued a commercial driver’s license by California.
Mr. Singh has pleaded not guilty to charges of vehicular homicide and manslaughter. He remains in the St. Lucie County Jail, and a trial date has not been set, said his lawyer Natalie Knight-Tai.
The crash was one of a number of episodes the administration pointed to as part of a major crackdown on immigrants working in commercial trucking. The administration put in place a new emergency rule blocking certain classes of immigrants from getting commercial trucking driver’s licenses. That rule was challenged in federal court and temporarily blocked by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Previous federal policies had allowed some immigrants, including asylum seekers, refugees and recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, to obtain a type of commercial driver’s license if they had authorization to work in the United States. But the Trump administration’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had barred certain groups of noncitizens from being able to obtain a commercial driver’s license, limiting the licenses to people on employment-based visas.
Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, has argued in court filings that the fatal crash was preventable, asserting that Mr. Singh did not speak English.
Mr. Uthmeier claimed that California and Washington had improperly issued commercial driver’s licenses to Mr. Singh, harming Florida by adding to the workload of state law enforcement officers. In October, Florida asked the Supreme Court to hear its claim.
Officials in California and Washington have denied the Florida claim that they do not properly vet applicants for commercial licenses. California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, had urged the justices to reject the case, asserting that California had complied with federal and state regulations when it issued Mr. Singh a license.
“Florida’s claims turn on its unfounded assumption that D.M.V. does not verify applicants’ legal presence in the United States or test for English language proficiency before issuing a commercial driver’s license,” Mr. Bonta wrote.
Washington’s attorney general, Nicholas W. Brown, called Florida’s claims “unserious,” asserting that the lawsuit was “a political stunt, not a real claim.” Mr. Brown told the justices that Mr. Uthmeier had announced the lawsuit on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News and had “neglected to notify the State of Washington of the case or serve any of the pleadings.”
Mr. Brown noted that Washington officials had received the case complaint weeks after it was filed — only after they reached out to notify Florida that they had never been served.
Justice Thomas wrote a dissent, joined by Justice Alito, explaining that, in his view, the Supreme Court was required to take up the claims because they were part of a dispute between states and if the court did not accept it, the state would have “nowhere else to bring them.”
The pair also echoed allegations by Florida that Mr. Singh may not have been able to read highway road signs in English. Justice Thomas wrote that Florida had asked to bring the lawsuit against states for “defying federal law by providing commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens who cannot read English.”
Justice Thomas went on to say that “an illegal alien who cannot read English road signs cannot drive an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer.”
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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