Attorney General Dan Rayfield took action against the Trump administration today to stop a new rule that would punish immigrants for using public benefits they’re legally allowed to use, like Medicaid and food assistance. The rule would let immigration officers deny green cards to people simply because they or a family member used help they were entitled to.
“The Trump Administration’s plans would make our communities less healthy and less safe,” said Attorney General Rayfield. “This rule would attack our neighbors and deny them access to critical services that they’re legally allowed to use.”
The rule changes who counts as a “public charge” – the government’s term for someone likely to need long-term government support to get by. Under a 2022 rule, that term only applied to people relying on cash assistance or living in a government-funded nursing home long-term. The new rule expands the definition significantly. Now, immigration officers can count almost any public benefit against someone applying for a green card, no matter how briefly they used it. Officers can even hold it against an applicant if a family member they support used benefits – even if that family member is a U.S. citizen.
Under the Trump Administration’s new rules, there’s no clear line for which benefits count or how much use is too much. That leaves families guessing about what kind of help might put their immigration status at risk.
The federal government already knows what that fear does. Its own estimates predict families will stop using benefits to which they’re entitled, making our communities sicker, hungrier, and less safe.
The damage won’t stop there. When people lose health coverage, they put off care until it becomes an emergency, driving up costs at hospitals and clinics that serve everyone. Schools could lose free and reduced-price meal programs for eligible kids if enrollment in Medicaid and food assistance drops too low – regardless of a student’s own immigration status. Federal school funding could drop too. Grocery stores and local businesses that rely on food assistance dollars would take a hit. And state and local governments will have to pay for new outreach, staff training, and technology to manage the fallout – on top of the cost of people cycling on and off these programs out of fear.
AG Rayfield filed the lawsuit alongside the attorneys general of 21 other states and Washington, D.C. They argue the rule is illegal: it was adopted without a reasonable basis, goes beyond what the Department of Homeland Security is allowed to do, and abandons the meaning of “public charge” that Congress set decades ago. Oregon has fought this exact fight before; when the Trump administration tried something similar in 2019, the state sued to block it, and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that win.
AG Rayfield is asking a federal judge to declare the 2026 public charge rule unlawful and vacate it, protecting Oregonians from its unlawful harms.
Attorney General Rayfield is filing this lawsuit with the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia, and the governor of Pennsylvania. The lawsuit was also filed alongside a coalition of cities and counties led by the City of New York.