The Southwest Conference has signed on to this amicus brief described below by Zachary Kolodin of PATTERSON BELKNAP WEBB & TYLER LLP.

A group of states led by the Texas Attorney General recently filed litigation in the Southern District of Texas requesting that the court permanently enjoin the DACA program based on the theory that President Obama did not have the authority to enact it. The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office has intervened to defend DACA from this attack, as have a group of DACA grantees represented by MALDEF. Together, they are opposing Texas’s request that the court block DHS from adjudicating any further DACA applications. We have been asked by the New Jersey defendants to submit a revised version of the Religious Organizations amicus brief we filed in New York and California earlier this year.

Our brief is substantially the same, but has been updated to reflect that, unlike the New York and California lawsuits, which were brought by states and individuals who wanted to stop the repeal of DACA, this is a suit by the state of Texas and others to stop DACA itself. Our central argument remains the same—that the end of DACA will cause religious groups and their communities tremendous harm. As usual, the legal citations in the brief have also been updated to reflect the new jurisdiction.