By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) – A federal judge on Thursday issued a nationwide ruling preventing U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration from barring children living in the U.S. illegally from enrolling in the federally funded preschool program Head Start.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez in Seattle at the request of Head Start associations in several states issued a nationwide injunction barring the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from enforcing the new immigration-related restrictions anywhere in the United States.
He ruled a day after a different federal judge in Rhode Island in a separate case by 21 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia issued an injunction halting the policy from being implemented within their own states.
“Today the court was clear: HHS does not have the authority to impose an immigration-based restriction on Head Start families,” Jennesa Calvo-Friedman, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the administration expected to be “vindicated by a higher court.”
“Illegal aliens should not have access to federal benefits funded by the American taxpayers for American citizens,” she said. “This is common sense.”
The case in Seattle was filed by associations whose members are Head Start agencies within the states of Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin as well as two parents’ groups, Parent Voices Oakland and Family Forward Oregon.
They challenged a July 14 directive from HHS that reinterpreted a 1996 law called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) that limited migrants’ access to government benefit programs in order to expand what government services the statute covered.
Among the programs included in the expanded list was Head Start, which is overseen by HHS and provides early childhood education, health, and nutrition to low-income children and families.
HHS had since 1998 interpreted the 1996 law as excluding non-postsecondary education programs, such as Head Start, and only applying to programs with eligibility criteria.
Martinez in Thursday’s ruling said HHS failed to follow necessary rulemaking requirements. He rejected the administration’s contention that Congress always meant for Head Start to be covered by PRWORA and said the new policy appeared to conflict with the law.
“Congress has operated with the 1998 HHS interpretation for years and has not included immigration status as criterion but instead widened eligibility to remove enrollment barriers,” Martinez, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush, wrote.
While the U.S. Supreme Court recently curtailed the ability of judges to halt policies on a nationwide basis, Martinez said such a ruling was still permissible to ensure the plaintiffs do not receive “piecemeal, confusing, and incomplete relief.”
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Jamie Freed)
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