New York filed suit in an upstate federal court Monday to defend new state laws passed to protect New Yorkers from federal immigration enforcement, saying it wanted to get ahead of the Trump administration’s expected attempts to claim the laws are unconstitutional and strike them down in court.
It didn’t quite accomplish that aim: Trump’s Department of Justice also filed a suit attacking those same laws that hit the docket a few minutes before the state’s did in a different upstate federal court — arguing, as New York officials said they expected, that the state’s laws violated provisions in the U.S. Constitution that prevent state governments from “regulating” federal government actions.
