New York Supreme Court hands Texas a win in lawsuit over busing scheme
(The Center Square)—The New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday handed Texas a win in another border-related lawsuit. The ruling came after the Fifth Circuit handed Texas a win in a marine barrier case, a federal district court handed Texas yet another favorable ruling in a border wall case, and now in New York over its busing strategy.
In this case, the high court ruled against New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ administration in a lawsuit it filed against 17 Texas busing companies. The city sought $700 million from the companies to cover its costs for caring for roughly 33,600 illegal border crossers bused there at the time.
While Adams complained about buses of groups of 100 arriving at a time, Texas was inundated with more than 1.9 million illegal border crossers in fiscal 2023 alone, The Center Square exclusively reported. The Texas legislature has also allocated nearly $12 billion of Texas taxpayer money to border security operations.
Adams requested a preliminary injunction to halt Texas’ busing scheme, which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott argued violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The high court agreed, dismissing Adams’ request.
“This is a plain attempt to regulate the transportation of indigent persons from State to State in violation of the Interstate Commerce Clause,” Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Mary Rosado wrote in the ruling. The court would not grant the request because the merits of the claim “are dubious at best given myriad constitutional concerns,” he wrote.
After Adams sued seven months ago, Abbott said the lawsuit “is baseless and deserves to be sanctioned. It’s clear that Mayor [Eric] Adams knows nothing about the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution,or about the constitutional right to travel that has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court. Every migrant bused or flown to New York City did so voluntarily after having been authorized by the Biden Administration to remain in the United States. As such, they have constitutional authority to travel across the country that Mayor Adams is interfering with. If the Mayor persists in this lawsuit, he may be held legally accountable for his violations.”
The New York Civil Liberties Union also said the mayor’s actions were unconstitutional.
In March, one busing company announced it was halting transportation of illegal border crossers from Texas to New York City, The Center Square reported.
In response to the ruling, the mayor’s office admitted part of the goal was to limit how many illegal border crossers were arriving in the city. His chief counsel, Lisa Zornberg, issued a statement, saying, “Notwithstanding the court’s ruling, the fact that we brought the lawsuit, for a period of January until now, had the effect of at least half of those bus companies stopped transporting individuals at Texas’ direction to New York City and was helpful to our management of the situation overall.”
Abbott lauded the ruling saying, “Another WIN! The New York Supreme Court REJECTED Mayor Adams’ attempt to block Texas from busing migrants to his sanctuary city. Until the Biden-Harris Administration secures the border, Texas will continue to send migrants to sanctuary cities.”
Critics note that Adams didn’t sue the Biden administration after it began flying hundreds of thousands of illegal foreign nationals, including thousands of unaccompanied minors, from the border to cities nationwide. Nor did he sue Arizona’s Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, who has transported more than 25,000 illegal foreign nationals to New York City. Nor has he sued El Paso’s Democratic officials, who were among the first to devise a busing scheme from the border to New York City before Abbott did, The Center Square reported.
In response to Chicago’s mayor implementing a policy to block Texas buses from arriving there, Texas expanded its operation to fly illegal border crossers there beginning in January.
El Paso officials have reported that New York City and Chicago are primary destinations of choice among illegal border crossers. Denver and Philadelphia were also popular and later added as destinations. City employees help “migrants with travel arrangements to destination cities of their choice,” city officials have explained.
Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, told The Center Square the difference between Texas’ transportation operation and the Biden administration’s is Texas “is being transparent. President Biden has been flying planeloads of migrants all around the country and oftentimes in the cover of night.”
As of last month, Texas has bused more than 120,000 foreign nationals north who were unlawfully released into Texas by the Biden administration, The Center Square reported.
Abbott first began busing illegal border crossers to self-described “sanctuary cities” in April 2022 through his border security mission, Operation Lone Star. Voluntary transportation from the border was first made available to those seeking to go to Washington, D.C. Illegal border crossers were first dropped off in front of Biden’s “border czar” Vice President Kamala Harris’ home. Since then, Texas has bussed more than 12,500 illegal border crossers to the nation’s capital.
Texas next expanded the busing initiative to New York City and Chicago in August 2022, having sent now more than 46,000 and 37,000, respectively, to the cities. Philadelphia was added in November 2022; more than 3,400 chose to receive taxpayer funded transportation there. In May and June of 2023, Denver and Los Angeles were added as destination cities. Since then, more than 19,200 and 1,500, respectively, chose to receive free transportation to the cities, according to the latest available data.
