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Statement by Attorney General Sessions on Lawsuit Against the State of California
Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued the following statement on the Department
of Justice’s new lawsuit against the State of California:
“I regret the need to file yet another lawsuit against the state
of California today. The Department of Justice is fighting every day to
take illegal guns and drugs off our streets, combat the opioid epidemic
and secure our borders from drug traffickers and criminal aliens, and
protect our national security from radical Islamic extremists and foreign
threats to our cyber security. But once again, we see that too many of
our resources are being diverted to deal with meritless and unnecessary lawsuits.
“We are forced to spend our resources to bring these lawsuits against
states like California that believe they are above the law and are passing
facially unconstitutional laws specifically intended to interfere with
the federal government’s ability to carry out its legitimate law
enforcement duties. And we are forced spend our resources to defend against
lawsuits that are patently meritless like one now filed by California
claiming that adding back a question on citizenship to the census is unconstitutional
after decades of its inclusion. Both of these lawsuits are forcing us
to spend precious tax payer dollars and Department resources to litigate
issues that most Americans believe are common sense—the executive
branch should be able to remove criminal aliens from a jail instead of
your neighborhood, the federal government should have an accurate count
of who can legally vote in our federal elections, a Department should
be able to rescind an unlawful policy intended to usurp Congress’
role in passing immigration laws, or that the President should be able
to know who is coming into our country from countries that are terrorist havens.
“The waste is compounded by ideological judging and forum shopping
that drags these cases out for months and years. In the meantime, the
federal government can be prevented from carrying out its lawful duties
by a single district court judge regardless of how many of the other 600
plus district court judges may disagree. The increasing frequency of limitless
injunctions is simply unsustainable, and the ever-more extreme nature
of these injunctions is only making it more obvious just how unlawful
they are. This is not a political or a partisan issue. It is a constitutional
issue and a rule of law issue and, more frequently now, a question of
how we are allocating our tax payer dollars—to protecting Americans
from violent crime and a raging drug epidemic or defending frivolous lawsuits
from partisan actors.
“Government-by-litigation isn’t what the American people voted
for and attempting to thwart an administration’s elected agenda
through endless, meritless lawsuits is a dangerous precedent.”