By Howard Fischer | AZ Capitol Times
The Department of Justice says Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has no legal right to try to overturn President Trump’s executive order abolishing birthright citizenship.
In a 60-page legal brief, Brett Shumate, the acting assistant attorney general of the agency’s civil rights division, says that Mayes and other state attorneys general lack standing to challenge the order.
Put simply, he is telling U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour that the only people who have the right to go into federal court are those who are somehow harmed by an action. And in this case, Shumate wrote, there is no such evidence.
He acknowledged that states are claiming that the order will cause increased costs of having to provide health, social and administrative services to those individuals who under the Trump order would no longer be considered citizens and therefore be ineligible for federal benefits.
