New York Attorney General Letitia James and the top prosecutors from 19 other states announced that they are suing the Trump administration to block new restrictions on federal funding to help some victims of sexual assault and domestic violence.
Specifically, the coalition is focusing its lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, on a new Justice Department rule that bars states from providing services to survivors who “cannot immediately prove their immigration status,” the attorneys general said in a statement.
“Sexual assault and domestic violence survivors turn to our courts for safety and protection,” James said in the statement. “They should never be turned away because of who they are or where they come from.”
The attorneys general warned that “even lawful residents and U.S. citizens could be shut out from urgently needed services” as a result of the new Justice Department restrictions.
“People fleeing abusive households often do not physically have the legal documents needed to demonstrate immigration status,” they said in the statement. “Abusers will frequently restrict a victim’s access to important legal documents as a means of control and as a tactic to prevent them from escaping the dangerous situation.”
The Justice Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit, which was filed jointly by James and the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
James, who successfully sued Donald Trump and his Trump Organization for fraud in 2023, and the other attorneys general said in their statement that the president appeared to minimize domestic violence in a recent speech.
“If a man has a little fight with the wife, they say this was a crime,” Trump said.
The lawsuit comes after the Justice Department informed the states in August they could no longer use money allotted to them through the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA), and the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants to provide legal services to undocumented immigrants.
The department’s new Legal Services Rule is scheduled to go into effect Oct. 31.
“With this cruel attempt to dictate which survivors deserve access to legal supports, DOJ is endangering families, silencing survivors, and threatening public safety,” James said.
In their lawsuit, the attorneys general argue that the Justice Department’s new restrictions violate the spending clause of the U.S. Constitution by attaching “retroactive and ambiguous conditions to grants that were already awarded, in some cases years ago.”
The coalition, in its statement, also argued that the Justice Department acted in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act by “failing to provide any explanation for reversing decades of policy, ignoring the reliance interests of states and service providers, and failing to consider the devastating harm to survivors.”
The attorneys general are asking the court to “immediately block DOJ’s unlawful action, preserve critical services for survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and other violent crimes, and affirm that no victim should be denied protection because of who they are or where they were born.”
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