Judge green lights New York’s driver’s license law, rejecting a Trump administration challenge

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge gave a green light Tuesday to New York’s so-called Green Light Law, rejecting the Trump administration’s bid to stop the state from giving people driver’s licenses without having them prove they are in the country legally.

U.S. District Judge Anne M. Nardacci in Albany ruled that the Republican administration — which challenged the law under President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration — had failed to support its claims that the state law usurps federal law or that it unlawfully regulates or unlawfully discriminates against the federal government.

The Justice Department sued the state over the law in February, naming Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, as defendants. At a news conference announcing the lawsuit, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi accused the officials, both Democrats, of prioritizing “illegal aliens over American citizens.”

“As I said from the start, our laws protect the rights of all New Yorkers and keep our communities safe,” James said in a statement Friday. “I will always stand up for New Yorkers and the rule of law.”

A message seeking comment was left for the Justice Department.

Nardacci, appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, wrote that her job was not to evaluate the desirability of the Green Light Law as a policy matter. Rather, she said in a 23-page opinion, it was to assess whether the Trump administration’s arguments established that the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which gives federal laws precedence over state laws.

The administration, she wrote, has “failed to state such a claim.”

The Green Light Law was enacted partly to improve public safety on the roads, as people without licenses sometimes drove without one, or without having passed a road test. The state also makes it easier for holders of such licenses to get auto insurance, thus cutting down on crashes involving uninsured drivers.

Under the law, people who don’t have a valid Social Security number can submit alternative forms of ID that include valid passports and driver’s licenses issued in other countries. Applicants must still get a permit and pass a road test to qualify for a “standard driver’s license.” It does not apply to commercial driver’s licenses.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit sought to strike down the law as “a frontal assault on the federal immigration laws, and the federal authorities that administer them.” It highlighted a provision that requires the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles commissioner to inform people who are in the country illegally when a federal immigration agency has requested their information.

In 2020, during Trump’s first term, his administration sought to pressure New York into changing the law by barring anyone from the state from enrolling in trusted traveler programs, meaning they would spend longer amounts of time going through security lines at airports.

The governor at the time, Andrew Cuomo, offered to restore federal access to driving records on a limited basis, but said he wouldn’t let immigration agents see lists of people who had applied for the special licenses available to immigrants who couldn’t prove legal residency in the U.S. The administration ultimately restored New Yorkers’ access to the trusted traveler program after a brief legal fight.

In the lawsuit rejected Tuesday, the administration argued that it could be easier to enforce federal immigration priorities if federal authorities had unfettered access to New York’s driver information. Nardacci, echoing a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in a county clerk’s earlier challenge to the law, wrote that such information “remains available to federal immigration authorities” through a lawful court order or judicial warrant.