{"id":18650,"date":"2017-03-14T08:44:30","date_gmt":"2017-03-14T13:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=18650"},"modified":"2017-03-14T08:44:30","modified_gmt":"2017-03-14T13:44:30","slug":"tennessee-takes-federal-refugee-program-to-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2017\/03\/14\/tennessee-takes-federal-refugee-program-to-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennessee Takes Federal Refugee Program to Court"},"content":{"rendered":"

JACKSON, Tenn. (Courthouse News) \u2013 3\/13\/17 – Tennessee sued the federal government Monday, claiming it violated the 10th<\/sup>\u00a0<\/span>Amendment by threatening the Volunteer State with Medicaid cuts unless it agrees to help fund the resettlement of refugees in the U.S.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0<\/span>complaint<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>\u2013 filed in Jackson, Tenn., federal court by the Tennessee General Assembly and two elected officials \u2013 says the federal Refugee Admissions Program violates the 10th<\/sup>Amendment\u2019s protection of state sovereignty as well as the U.S. Constitution\u2019s Spending Clause.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis suit is not intended to inflict harm on immigrants or refugees from any nation,\u201d the lawsuit states. \u201cRather, this is a suit that seeks to preserve the constitutional relationship between the federal government and the states as mandated by our nation\u2019s founders.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the complaint, the Refugee Resettlement Act of 1980 originally called for reimbursement of expenses to the states, but that was eliminated in 1991.<\/p>\n

Tennessee says it spent more than $31 million in 2015 to support the refugee resettlement program through TennCare, its version of Medicaid jointly funded by the state and the federal government.<\/p>\n

After first voluntarily participating in the refugee program, the state unsuccessfully tried to withdraw from it in 2008.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite Tennessee notifying the federal government that it declined to further implement, fund, or participate in the federal refugee resettlement program, the federal government\u2014through various regulations and statutes\u2014coerced the state to continue funding the refugee resettlement program by threatening the state with the loss of federal Medicaid funding,\u201d the complaint states. \u201cThe federal government nullified the decision of the people of Tennessee to withdraw from an ostensibly voluntary federal program and thereby commandeered state funds to support a federal initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Specifically, Tennessee claims it is threatened with the loss of $7 billion in annual Medicaid funding \u2013 nearly 20 percent of its overall state budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conditions set by the federal government that compel the state of Tennessee to permit individuals in the refugee resettlement program access to Medicaid are not germane to the operation or functioning of the state\u2019s Medicaid program as a whole,\u201d it says. \u201cThe refugee resettlement program also commandeers other state funds and instrumentalities through health and welfare programs and public schooling, including the program known as \u2018English Language Learners,\u2019 as mandated by 20 U.S.C. \u00a7 1703.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Volunteer State seeks a court order stopping the federal government from resettling more refugees in Tennessee unless it pays for the resettlement itself.<\/p>\n

The defendants in the lawsuit are the U.S. State Department; Secretary of State Rex Tillerson; the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration; bureau head Simon Henshaw; the Department of Health and Human Services; its secretary Tom Price; and the Office of Refugee Resettlement; and its acting director, Ken Tota.<\/p>\n

The State Department did not immediately respond to an email request for comment sent Monday evening.<\/p>\n

In addition to the state of Tennessee and its Legislature, the plaintiffs also include Sen. John Stevens, R-Huntingdon, and Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver, R-Lancaster.<\/p>\n

They are represented by Richard Thompson with the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which said last year that it was chosen by Tennessee lawmakers to represent the state in its challenge to the refugee program.<\/p>\n

At the time, Rep. Weaver said, \u201cOf all the legislation that I have worked on, this by far is the most important. The only way we can get back to our constitutional beginnings and the intent birthed by our founding fathers is to go and take it back.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JACKSON, Tenn. (Courthouse News) \u2013 3\/13\/17 – Tennessee sued the federal government Monday, claiming it violated the 10th\u00a0Amendment by threatening the Volunteer State with Medicaid cuts unless it agrees to help fund the resettlement of refugees in the U.S. The\u00a0complaint\u00a0\u2013 filed in Jackson, Tenn., federal court by the Tennessee General Assembly and two elected officials […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18651,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18650\/revisions\/18651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}