AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas is leading a 17-state coalition suing over President Barack Obama's recently announced executive actions on immigration, arguing in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that the move "tramples" key portions of the U.S. Constitution.
Many top Republicans have denounced Obama's order, which was designed to spare millions living illegally in the United States from deportation. But Texas Gov.-elect and current Attorney General Greg Abbott took it a step further, filing a formal legal challenge in federal court in the Southern District of Texas.
His state is joined by 16 other mostly conservative ones, largely in the south and Midwest, such as Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana and the Carolinas. They aren't seeking monetary damages, but instead want the courts to block Obama's actions.
While Abbott had pledged for weeks that his state would sue, the span of the coalition Texas put together surprised both proponents and opponents of the executive order.
Announced Nov. 20, Obama's order extends protection from deportation and the right to work to an estimated 4.1 million parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who have lived in the country for at least five years and to hundreds of thousands more young people.
The lawsuit raises two major objections: that Obama violated the "Take Care Clause" of the U.S. Constitution — which Abbott said limits the scope of presidential power — and that the order will "exacerbate the humanitarian crisis along the southern border, which will affect increased state investment in law enforcement, health care and education."
Abbott said it's up to the president to "execute the law, not de facto make law."
