Chiles v. US

• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida
• Citation: Chiles v. US, 874 F. Supp. 1334 (S.D. Fla. 1994)
• Decision Date: 20 December 1994
• Docket Number: No. 94-0676-CIV.,94-0676-CIV.
• Parties: Lawton M. CHILES, Jr., et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES of America, et al., Defendants.

874 F. Supp. 1334

Lawton M. CHILES, Jr., et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES of America, et al., Defendants.

No. 94-0676-CIV.

United States District Court, S.D. Florida, Miami Division.

December 20, 1994.

Parker D. Thomson, Special Asst. Atty. Gen., Miami, FL, Louis F. Hubener, Ana Cristina Martinez, Asst. Atty. Gen., Office of the Atty. Gen., Tallahassee, FL, Phyllis Douglas, Miami, FL, Robert Blake, Jackson Memorial Hosp., Miami, FL, for plaintiffs.

Dexter Lee, Asst. U.S. Atty., Miami, FL, David J. Anderson, Thomas Millet, Civ. Div., Dept. of Justice, Washington, DC, for defendants.

ORDER ON MOTION TO DISMISS AND MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

EDWARD B. DAVIS, District Judge.

THE IMMIGRATION CRISIS that is currently facing the United States has culminated in the filing of this action. This problem is not new. As the then-President Ronald Reagan proclaimed in 1981:

The ongoing migration of persons to the United States in violation of our laws is a serious national problem, detrimental to the interests of the United States. A particularly difficult aspect of the problem is the continuing illegal migration by sea of large numbers of undocumented aliens to the Southeastern United States. These arrivals have severely strained the law enforcement resources of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and have threatened the welfare and safety of communities in that region.

Proclamation No. 4865, 46 Fed.Reg. 48,107 (1981). The costs of this continuing influx of aliens are disproportionately concentrated in only a few states,¹ including Florida.²

BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY OF THE COMPLAINT

On April 11, 1994, Lawton M. Chiles, Jr., the State of Florida, the Dade County Public Health Trust, and the School Board of Dade County, Florida ("Plaintiffs") filed suit against the United States of America and several individual officers of the United States. The Plaintiffs' grievances with the United States are based on allegations that the United States has failed to properly enforce immigration policies, thereby causing the State of Florida to incur disproportionate and unfair expenses in educating and providing other public benefits to aliens.³ Plaintiffs apparently realize the difficulty in having this Court mandate that the executive branch of the United States enforce immigration laws; however, they still contend that "a mandatory injunction requiring defendants to make payments under statutes mandating the provision of financial assistance is well within the power of this Court...." (Complaint ¶ 14). They urge this Court to grant them relief because they have no other avenue in which to obtain a remedy:

Plaintiffs have no administrative remedy to pursue, to influence or to change the decisions and policies of defendants, which decisions and policies permit and cause a massive and uncontrolled influx of aliens, including undocumented aliens, to enter and remain in the United States and the State of Florida.

(Complaint ¶ 61). They further argue that the political process cannot provide them with help:

The national political process has provided no adequate safeguard against this discrimination. The costs imposed by the continuing influx of aliens on state and local governments are disproportionately concentrated in only a few states, including Florida. Representatives of other states have a political incentive to ignore such costs, or to provide only small and thus far ineffective tokens of assistance, rather than ensure that they are borne equitably. Accordingly, unless this Court grants appropriate relief, the State of Florida and the other plaintiffs will continue to incur and have to pay such costs as are described herein in the future.

(Complaint ¶ 64).

The complaint alleges four counts. In Count I, Plaintiffs allege that they are entitled to grants from an Immigration Emergency Fund administered by the Attorney General of the United States, and they ask the Court to direct that Defendants develop a plan to disburse that fund. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101 (1993). As relief, Plaintiffs demand that the Attorney General of the United States grant the State of Florida its share of the emergency funds. (Complaint ¶ 72).

In Count II of the complaint, Plaintiffs allege that, under 8 U.S.C. § 1103, Defendants have failed to "enforce and administer the immigration laws or to accept the financial responsibility for such failure." (Complaint ¶ 76). Plaintiffs also frame this cause of action under 5 U.S.C. § 702 and 5 U.S.C. § 706. Plaintiffs allege that they have no choice but to pay the cost of the Defendants' failure to enforce the immigration laws and that failure to absorb the costs would cause Florida to suffer injury through "increased crime, disease, illness, homelessness, and the many problems presented by an uneducated or poorly educated populace." (Complaint ¶ 77). Plaintiffs argue that instead of forcing Defendants to properly enforce the immigration laws, the problem could be "alleviated by an ongoing restitution to Plaintiffs of the prospective costs imposed on them by the Federal Abdication and Default Policy." (Complaint ¶ 81).

Count III challenges the operation of two federal programs, Medicaid and Aid for Families with Dependent Children ("AFDC"). Both programs have provisions limiting the payment of federal funds to certain aliens.⁴ Plaintiffs argue that the State of Florida is disproportionately affected by these restrictions because of the large number of aliens that live in Florida, and therefore ask the Court to order Defendants to provide these services. They allege that it "is arbitrary, irrational, and unconstitutional for Defendants not to provide Medicaid and AFDC assistance to Florida on the same basis that other states are assisted. That basis is need." (Complaint ¶ 87). Plaintiffs argue:

The defendants' failure to compensate the plaintiffs for making need-based payments to aliens, while assisting virtually all other states with virtually all of their expenditures to provide need-based medical care and aid to families with dependent children, effectively penalizes plaintiffs for having a needy population that is disproportionately comprised of aliens, largely as a result of defendants' Federal Abdication and Default Policy.

(Complaint ¶ 89). Plaintiffs also allege that Defendants are in violation of Article IV, § 4 and Article I, § 8 of the Constitution. (Complaint ¶¶ 90, 91).

Count IV of the complaint alleges that the Defendants have imposed the financial burdens of immigration on the State of Florida thereby violating the Guarantee and Invasion Clauses of Article IV of the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment by requiring Florida to provide social welfare services to these immigrants. (Complaint ¶¶ 97, 98). Plaintiffs allege that the failure to properly enforce the immigration laws has resulted in an "invasion" of the State of Florida by aliens and has "seriously impaired the constitutional guarantee of a republican form of government." (Complaint ¶ 97). As in Count II, rather than asking the Court to force the executive to enforce the immigration laws, Plaintiffs ask the Court to grant a mandatory injunction requiring the Defendants to pay restitution until the immigration laws are enforced properly. (Complaint ¶ 104).⁵

STANDARD OF REVIEW

The Defendants seek dismissal of the entire complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). To state a claim, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a) requires, inter alia, "a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." The Court must "take the material allegations of the complaint and its incorporated exhibits as true, and liberally construe the complaint in favor of the Plaintiff." Burch v. Apalachee Community Mental Health Services, Inc., 840 F.2d 797, 798 (11th Cir.1988) (citation omitted), aff'd, 494 U.S. 113, 110 S.Ct. 975, 108 L.Ed.2d 100 (1990). The law in this Circuit is well-settled that "the `accepted rule' for appraising the sufficiency of a complaint is `that a complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief'." SEC v. ESM Group, Inc., 835 F.2d 270, 272 (11th Cir.) (quoting Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 102, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957)), cert. denied, 486 U.S. 1055, 108 S.Ct. 2822, 100 L.Ed.2d 923 (1988). The moving party bears a heavy burden. St. Joseph's Hospital, Inc. v. Hospital Corp. of America, 795 F.2d 948, 953 (11th Cir.1986).

PARTIES ARGUMENTS AND COURT'S DECISION

The Defendants present three general arguments in support of dismissal of all four counts of the complaint in the aggregate. Then, they discuss the complaint count by count, urging that each count in the complaint fails to state a claim in its own right.

A. Count I

Before addressing Defendants' general arguments, the Court will address a new development as it relates to Count I. As stated earlier, in Count I, Plaintiffs allege that they are entitled to grants from an Immigration Emergency Fund administered by the Attorney General of the United States, and they ask the Court to direct that the Defendants develop a plan to disburse that fund. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101 (1993).

In 1986, Congress authorized a continuing annual appropriation of $35 million to be used to reimburse states for costs incurred in meeting immigration emergencies. In 1990, Congress adopted an amendment to 8 U.S.C. § 1101 which allowed the Attorney General to disburse up to $20 million of this $35 million annually to states without the President's declaration of an immigration emergency. In 1991, the Attorney General was directed to promulgate regulations governing the process by which states could be reimbursed with the appropriated funds. See Pub.L. 102-140, Title VI, § 610, 105 Stat. 832.

Although Proposed Immigration Emergency Fund Rules were first published on January 14, 1992, final...