PHOENIX — Saying “dreamers” are here legally, a federal judge late Thursday permanently blocked Arizona from denying them licenses to drive.
U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell rejected arguments by attorneys for the state, seeking to void the temporary injunction already in place that those accepted into the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program are in this country illegally.
He said there is no basis for the state’s argument the Department of Homeland Security has no legal authority to permit them to stay and work, which is what then-Gov. Jan Brewer contended when she issued an executive order in 2012 directing that DACA recipients not be issued licenses.
She said a 1996 state law reserves licenses for those whose presence in this country is “authorized by federal law,” a status the state argued is not conferred by an administrative decision to let DACA recipients stay and work here.
Gov. Doug Ducey is reviewing the ruling and had no comment on possible further appeals, press aide Daniel Scarpinato said.
Ducey said during the campaign he agreed with Brewer’s decision. But he also said that once he became governor he would evaluate all pending litigation to decide what to pursue and what to drop.
In issuing the permanent injunction, Campbell said the state has historically given licenses to thousands of other illegal residents who were given similar administrative permission to stay, which makes denying them to DACA recipients a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“The court is not saying that the Constitution requires the state of Arizona to grant driver’s licenses to all noncitizens,” Campbell wrote. “But if the state chooses to confer licenses on some individuals who have been temporarily authorized to stay by the federal government, it may not deny them to similarly situated individuals without a rational basis for the distinction.”
Dreamers have been allowed to apply for licenses since Campbell issued a preliminary injunction blocking the policy a month ago.
MVD officials had no immediate estimate of how many licenses have been issued. At last count more than 22,000 Arizonans had been granted DACA status.
In Campbell’s 20-page ruling he rejected multiple state arguments for withdrawing the injunction.
Attorneys for the state argued Arizona could face liability if it issued licenses to those not authorized to be here. But Campbell said that’s never happened.
Campbell also rejected claims that giving licenses to DACA recipients could lead to improper access to federal and state benefits, saying there is “no basis whatsoever for believing that a driver’s license alone could be used to establish eligibility for such benefits.”
And he rebuffed concerns ADOT would be burdened if the DACA program were canceled and the state had to recall all those licenses.
Campbell said his decision to issue the injunction was also based on his finding dreamers were being harmed by their inability to drive, which he said affected their government-granted right to work.
