By Andrew Chung
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a bid by Republican state officials to take over the legal defense of a hardline immigration rule imposed under former President Donald Trump barring permanent residency for immigrants deemed likely to need government benefits.
The unsigned one-sentence ruling “dismissed as improvidently granted” an appeal by 13 Republican state attorneys general led by Arizona’s Mark Brnovich seeking to defend the rule in court after Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration refused to do so and rescinded it. The rule widened the scope of immigrants deemed likely to become a “public charge” mainly dependent on the government for subsistence.
The state attorneys general had hoped to ask lower courts to throw out decisions that sided with various challengers to the rule, including a number of Democratic-led states.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
