TALLAHASSEE — A federal appeals court has ordered Florida to explain how it can legally challenge Biden administration immigration policies in a fight spearheaded by Attorney General Ashley Moody and Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week ordered the state and the Biden administration to file briefs about whether Florida has legal standing to challenge policies related to undocumented immigrants being released from detention after crossing the country’s southwest border.
The order came after the U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled that Texas and Louisiana did not have standing to challenge federal immigration-enforcement policies. The U.S. Supreme Court case involved policies related to arresting migrants.
“That decision raises several significant questions about Florida’s standing in these cases,” Monday’s appeals-court order said.
Moody and DeSantis have made a high-profile issue of criticizing the federal government’s handling of immigration issues. DeSantis has directed flights of migrants from Texas to Massachusetts and California and has sent law enforcement officers to the Texas border with Mexico.
The state filed a lawsuit in September 2021 challenging Biden administration policies. The lawsuit ultimately led to two rulings last year by U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell that said policies, known as “Parole Plus Alternatives to Detention” and “Parole with Conditions,” violated federal law.
The Pensacola-based judge issued the rulings before the U.S. Supreme Court decided the Texas and Louisiana case. U.S. Department of Justice attorneys took the dispute to the Atlanta-based appeals court.
The appeals court in February directed Wetherell to consider again whether he had jurisdiction in the Florida challenge.
Wetherell, appointed to the federal bench by former President Donald Trump, quickly issued a decision that drew distinctions between the Florida and Texas cases.
“The policies at issue in these (Florida) cases do not involve arrest or prosecution, but rather explain how DHS (the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) will exercise its statutory ‘parole’ authority,” Wetherell wrote. “Nothing in Texas (the U.S. Supreme Court opinion) held that federal courts cannot adjudicate the validity of non-detention/parole policies like these.”
In its order, the appeals court appeared to focus on that question.
“Though the Supreme Court’s opinion pointed out that such (parole) policies ‘arguably might raise a different standing question,’ it is far from certain that the sentence by itself ‘establishes that Texas does not control the resolution of the standing issue in these cases,’” the order said.
Florida has contended undocumented immigrants move to the state and create costs for such things as the education, health-care and prison systems.
