Inadmissible as a Public Charge: Adjudicating the Trump Administration’s War on Legal Immigration

Volume 93, No. 1, Fall 2020

By Kaylin Hawkins [PDF]

This Comment argues that the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) gives federal judges clear authority to “set aside agency action . . . [that is] arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” The public charge rule puts the Trump administration’s actions well within the meaning of “arbitrary and capricious” under the APA by overturning decades of precedent without congressional approval, enacting a policy that flouts its own stated purpose, and cloaking a discriminatory policy in pretextual reasoning. As such, this Comment argues that federal judges should respond accordingly: exercise the power given to them by the APA and vacate the public charge policy.

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Randy Kominsky is a member of Temple Law’s Class of 1979. Mr. Kominsky was a staff editor for Volume 51 and an associate research editor for Volume 52 of Temple Law Review. His case note, Housing Discrimination – The Appropriate Evidentiary Standard for Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, was published in 1978.[1] After graduating, he moved […]

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