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Key Takeaways

• Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell has joined attorneys general from 20 other states, the District of Columbia, the governor of Pennsylvania, and a coalition of cities and counties in a lawsuit against a new federal "public charge" rule.
• The rule, scheduled to take effect Friday, would give immigration officers broad discretion to deny green cards to applicants who use public assistance programs.
• The coalition argues the policy violates federal law and could cost states billions in Medicaid, CHIP, and SNAP funding as families disenroll out of fear.

By Samuel López | USA Herald

BOSTON — Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell has joined a multistate coalition in suing the Trump administration over a new public charge rule set to take effect Friday, adding her state's name to one of the more closely watched immigration fights currently working its way through the federal courts.

The rule, proposed by the Department of Homeland Security, would expand the authority of immigration officers to deny green card applications based on whether an applicant has used public assistance programs. Supporters and critics of the policy have sharply different views of what that authority should look like in practice, but the legal fight now underway will turn less on policy preference and more on a narrower question: whether DHS followed the law in writing the rule.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, contends that the rule runs afoul of the Administrative Procedure Act. Specifically, the coalition argues that DHS exceeded its statutory authority and abandoned the legal definition of "public charge" that has guided immigration decisions for decades. That definition has historically focused on whether an individual is likely to become primarily dependent on the government for subsistence — a considerably narrower standard, the plaintiffs say, than one that considers any use of public benefits.

Beyond the legal argument, the states point to what they describe as a practical, immediate consequence: fear. According to the complaint, immigrant families — including those with members who are U.S. citizens or otherwise unaffected by the rule — are likely to withdraw from public benefit programs simply to avoid any perceived risk to a pending or future green card application. That "chilling effect," the coalition argues, would ripple well beyond the immigration system itself.

The numbers cited in the lawsuit are substantial. DHS's own estimates, referenced in the complaint, project that disenrollment driven by the rule could reduce federal Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program transfer payments to states by roughly $4.05 billion a year. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program transfers, the filing states, could fall by an additional $1.02 billion annually. For state budget officers already navigating tight fiscal years, those figures represent more than an abstract policy dispute — they translate into real funding gaps that states would have to absorb or otherwise address.

Joining Massachusetts in the litigation are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, along with the District of Columbia and the governor of Pennsylvania. A separate coalition of cities and counties, led by New York City, has also joined the suit — underscoring that the rule's reach, as the plaintiffs see it, would extend well past state governments and into the budgets of local health and social service agencies.

The coalition is asking a federal judge to declare the rule unlawful and to vacate it before Friday's scheduled implementation date, a request that puts the case on an unusually compressed timeline. Whether the court acts before the deadline — and what happens to the rule if it does not — remains an open question as of this writing. USA Herald will continue to track the case as it moves through the Southern District of New York.

About the Author

Samuel López is an independent news reporter for USA Herald, where he has reported since 2022. A legal professional with more than two decades of experience across the legal and insurance sectors —López brings an investigative journalist's eye and a legal researcher's rigor to his coverage of complex litigation.

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