Texas Impact and the Texas Interfaith Center for Public Policy have joined with other religious organizations in an effort lead by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs to file an amicus brief, in HIAS v. Trump urging the U.S. District Court in Maryland to grant an injunction against Executive Order 13888 (EO).
“Onerous, vague, and arbitrary regulations can amount to ‘death by 1,000 cuts,’ and this Administration is putting long-standing ministries of our faith communities between a rock and a hard place requiring the nonprofits to lobby state and local governments for written consent before resettling vulnerable and well-vetted people in a local community,” said attorney Joshua Houston, Advocacy Director for Texas Impact.
Instead of going through the ordinary rulemaking process, on September 26, 2019, President Trump issued Executive Order 13888, which creates a new precondition requiring written consent from both the state and “locality” before a federally contracted resettlement agency can resettle a refugee. No express authority for such a precondition exists in the Refugee Act, and the EO leaves vague what unit of local government constitutes a “locality.”
In implementing the EO, the State Department has put the onus on the resettlement agency to solicit and obtain the written consents for the government agency. Such a regulation raises serious questions for the nonprofit as to whether their 501(c)(3) status is put at risk for engaging in a “substantial” amount of lobbying. Additionally, the EO raises important legal concerns regarding what federal activities and authorities may be delegated to states, local governments, and private contractors.