NEW YORK — New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday, Sept. 14, 2026, led a coalition of 22 states and the District of Columbia in suing to block a new Department of Homeland Security “public charge” rule that would let immigration officers weigh nearly any use of public benefits — including SNAP food stamps, Medicaid, and housing aid — against green-card and visa applicants. A separate suit led by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, joined by Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Clara County, Seattle and King County, and D.C., was filed the same day in Manhattan federal court, according to the New York Attorney General’s office and Reuters.

The rule, announced in July and set to take effect Friday, Sept. 18, revives and expands the first-term 2019 approach abandoned under President Joe Biden’s narrower 2022 rule. For more than a century, “public charge” has meant someone likely to become primarily dependent on the government for long-term subsistence. Biden’s rule limited the inquiry largely to cash assistance for income maintenance or long-term institutionalization at government expense. The new DHS policy again lets officers count non-cash benefits used for any length of time — and, plaintiffs say, benefits lawfully used by U.S.-citizen family members, including a citizen child’s school meals or state health coverage counted against a noncitizen parent’s application.

“Hardworking families should not be forced to go without the support they need because they fear asking for assistance will get them deported,” James said in a statement. “This rule preys on that fear and counts on families forfeiting the food assistance, health care coverage, and other public benefits to which they are legally entitled. My office fought this exact policy once before and won, and we are leading the nation to ensure the Trump administration cannot inflict this harm on families again.” Mamdani said the rule “seeks to push immigrant families away from the programs that have kept people fed and healthy for decades,” warning that the chilling effect will not stop with the households DHS targets.

The states argue DHS exceeded its statutory authority, acted arbitrarily under the Administrative Procedure Act, and departed from Congress’s longstanding meaning of public charge — leaving families to guess which lawful benefits could sink an application. James’s office says the government has acknowledged that fear and confusion can drive disenrollment, citing prior-iteration rates as high as 35 percent among mixed-status families and 60 percent among refugees, and that DHS itself projects billions in lost Medicaid/CHIP and SNAP funding that states administer. A DHS spokesperson, asked about the suits, called the plaintiffs “sanctuary states” and “left-wing leaders” “terrified they will lose federal funds because hundreds of thousands of illegals and noncitizens might remove themselves from American welfare programs,” Reuters reported.

Joining James are the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and D.C., plus the governor of Pennsylvania. Similar suits helped sink the first-term rule before Biden dropped the defense and rewrote it. The policy fight is older than either administration’s branding: whether immigration officers get open-ended discretion to treat lawful use of the modern welfare state — including by citizen kids — as evidence an applicant is a “public charge,” and whether that discretion is supposed to chill enrollment as much as it screens applicants. Plaintiffs want SDNY to declare the 2026 rule unlawful and vacate it before Friday’s effective date.

Sources