Alabama U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks joined an amicus brief to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals filed by the American Center for Law and Justice on behalf of 26 states.
The brief is appended to a federal lawsuit that asks the court for an injunction to stop the implementation of an executive order signed by President Barack Obama to halt the deportation of several categories of American residents who entered the country illegally.
“By joining the amicus brief, we ask the courts to uphold the separation of powers, checks and balances, and the rule of law. I support the 26 plaintiff states, including the state of Alabama, that have taken the initiative to rein in Obama’s illegal and unconstitutional executive overreach,” Brooks said Monday in a prepared statement.
In addition to the weight he lends the ACLJ suit, Brooks has introduced House Resolution 757 in the 113th Congress and House Resolution 11 in the 114th, which seek judgment action in federal court to determine whether Obama’s executive order violates the Constitution and federal immigration law. If the court agrees, then it requests injunctive relief and a writ of mandamus to force the president and the executive branch to obey immigration laws as passed by Congress
“While the underlying reason for this fight is the financial well-being of American families, the lawsuit itself is, as the complaint states, ‘about the rule of law, presidential power, and the structural limits of the U.S. Constitution,’” Brooks said.
Preempting criticism of his move as a mere ideological gesture, Brooks couched his signing on to the suit as an issue of good government and constitutional principle.
“This is not a partisan issue,” Brooks said. “When one branch of the government unconstitutionally usurps the powers of another, it affects all Americans, because it threatens the very core of our system of checks and balances that has served our government, and America, so well for so long. If the president can unilaterally ‘change the law’ as he says he can, why, then, did America’s founders create Congress?”
