The lawsuit filed by state prosecutor Xavier Becerra has similar arguments to the lawsuit filed last week by 15 states and Washington DC: it points out that the government violates the Constitution and other laws by rescinding DACA.
California was joined, in separate appeals, by the states of Maryland, Maine, and Minnesota.
Becerra had warned that California would file its own lawsuit because more than 200,000 beneficiaries of the DACA live in the state and would be most affected by its cancellation.
President Trump’s administration, through Attorney General Jeff Session, ordered last week to stop all new applications to join the program and gave Congress a period of six months to act, otherwise immigration relief will be canceled .
The lawsuit is primarily based on procedural arguments, including, for example, that federal law requires that such decisions be made for solid reasons and only after the public has the opportunity to make formal comments. He adds that the government did not comply with federal law requiring it to consider the negative effects of the decision on small businesses.
It also cites the Fifth Amendment constitutional process, which warns immigration and administrative authorities to refrain from using information provided by program participants to deport and prosecute their employers. The complaint says that would be to misuse the information provided in good faith by program participants.
Other states that have challenged include New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia.
The University of California also filed a lawsuit last Friday.
Sessions said that President Barack Obama’s executive order to authorize DACA without congressional approval “was an unconstitutional exercise of authority.”
However, state demand says that the current government must follow legal procedures if it wants to end the program.