WASHINGTON – New York’s “Green Light Law” requires county clerks to issue drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens, and also prohibits them from sharing information about illegal aliens with federal authorities. But now the Trump Administration is fighting back, suing the state in federal court to defeat the Green Light Law. The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) has filed a brief in the case urging the court to strike the measure down.
In its brief, IRLI shows that the Green Light Law not only forces county clerks to commit the federal crime of harboring illegal aliens, but also forces them to commit the federal crimes of encouraging and inducing illegal aliens to remain in the United States and of trafficking illegal aliens. For that reason, the Green Light Law is unconstitutional: state laws may not make it impossible to obey federal law.
IRLI also shows that the Green Light Law is field preempted because it sets up a state system of registering aliens at variance with federal laws that, the Supreme Court has held, have “occupied the field” of alien registration, making state laws on the same subject void under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
“Giving driver’s licenses to illegal aliens only encourages more illegal immigration, and New York’s law was specifically designed to help illegal aliens take jobs from Americans,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “When a state passes laws to enact policies so at variance with the policies of the nation, those laws are very likely to be preempted—and this one is. We hope the court sees the many ways the Green Light Law violates our Constitution, and strikes it down.”
The case is United States v. New York, No. 1:25-cv-0205 (N.D.N.Y.).
