State of New York v. Mayorkas

Background

New York and a certified class of New Yorkers challenged the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to suspend all New York residents’ eligibility to enroll or re-enroll in Customs and Border Protection’s Trusted Traveler Programs. The programs include Global Entry, NEXUS, Secure Electronic Network for Travelers Rapid Inspection, and Free and Secure Trade.

DHS said the decision was based on New York’s Driver’s License Access and Privacy Act, known as the Green Light Law. The law authorized driver’s licenses without regard to citizenship or immigration status and restricted the disclosure of driver’s-license records to federal immigration authorities without a court order or judicial warrant. DHS stated that the law prevented it from accessing New York Department of Motor Vehicles records needed to evaluate applicants, including some criminal-history information.

New York later amended the Green Light Law to allow information sharing when necessary for a person seeking acceptance into a Trusted Traveler Program. On July 23, 2020, DHS lifted the ban. DHS later withdrew its motion to dismiss the constitutional claims and its motion for summary judgment on the Administrative Procedure Act claims. The defendants initially argued that the cases were moot, but later conceded that lingering effects of the ban meant the cases were not moot. They also acknowledged that statements and representations made during the litigation had been inaccurate or misleading in some respects.

Ruling on the Administrative Procedure Act Claims

The court considered the plaintiffs’ unopposed motion for summary judgment. Summary judgment is a decision entered when the record shows no genuine dispute over a material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Even when a motion is unopposed, the court must independently determine whether the movant is legally entitled to judgment.

The Administrative Procedure Act requires courts to set aside agency action that is arbitrary and capricious. That standard requires an agency to consider important aspects of the problem and provide an explanation that is consistent with the evidence before it.

The court held that the Trusted Traveler decision was arbitrary and capricious. DHS’s decision said New York residents were categorically ineligible because New York’s law prevented access to relevant Department of Motor Vehicles information and compromised CBP’s ability to determine whether applicants were low risk. But DHS later admitted that several states, the District of Columbia, and a territory also did not provide comparable driving-history information, while CBP continued to accept, evaluate, and approve applications from those jurisdictions when appropriate. The court concluded that these facts contradicted the rationale for the New York ban. It also noted that DHS had acknowledged the decision was based on an erroneous foundation and was not legally supportable.

The court stated that evidence suggested the decision may have been pretextual, but it did not need to resolve that issue because DHS’s admissions independently established that the decision was arbitrary and capricious.

Disposition

The court granted the plaintiffs’ unopposed motion for summary judgment. It formally vacated the Trusted Traveler decision to the extent it was still in effect or continued to have an effect, and remanded the matter to DHS. The parties were ordered to confer and submit a joint letter addressing whether additional remedies were needed. The Clerk of Court was directed to terminate the docket entries for the plaintiffs’ summary-judgment motions.

The opinion did not decide the constitutional claims because the defendants withdrew their motion to dismiss those claims. The court also did not decide whether Acting Secretary Chad F. Wolf was lawfully serving in that position.