By Chad Sokol
The Spokesman-Review
A crowd of students and professors at Gonzaga University chuckled Friday afternoon when Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson took a jab at the Trump administration’s legal defense of the president’s travel ban.
Ferguson, who started his legal career in Spokane after attending law school in New York, led Washington to become the first state to formally challenge President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries. During those proceedings, the Department of Justice asserted the president should have “unreviewable authority to suspend the admission of any class of aliens.”
During a presentation Friday at Gonzaga’s law school, Ferguson projected that line onto a large screen. The words “unreviewable authority” appeared in bold text.
“I was fascinated by that argument,” he told the crowd. “Are we not a democracy? Do we not have a system of checks and balances?”
Ferguson visited Washington State University on Thursday and Gonzaga on Friday to update listeners on the status of the complicated legal battles surrounding Trump’s immigration orders — both of which have been blocked by federal judges pending constitutional challenges.
Ferguson found himself in the national spotlight after his team successfully argued for the first injunction in early February. Part of their argument hinged on statements that Trump and one his surrogates, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, made during the presidential campaign.
In a December 2015 statement that still appears on Trump’s campaign website, the candidate called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”
Giuliani revealed that he took action on that discriminatory statement in January by assembling a commission that included attorneys and lawmakers.
“When (Trump) first announced it, he said ‘Muslim ban,’ ” Giuliani said on Fox News. “He called me up, he said, ‘Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.’ “
During Friday’s presentation, a student wearing a blue TRUMP sweater asked Ferguson how those statements are relevant in legal proceedings, and if he would have filed suit without them.
“Courts are empowered to look behind the document to see the motivation for it,” Ferguson answered. “When courts do that, it’s entirely appropriate to look at statements made by the people who adopted it.”
Even without the president’s incendiary remarks, Ferguson said, the lawsuit could have moved forward on numerous other constitutional and statutory claims.
He also shrugged off accusations that his resistance against Trump’s agenda is politically motivated, pointing out that he sued the Obama administration — twice — over waste cleanup and worker safety issues at the Hanford nuclear plant.
“When I sued Barack Obama, not one person said that was political,” Ferguson said. “My job is to go where the law takes me.”
After a federal appeals court upheld the stay on Trump’s first travel ban, he fired off an angry tweet — “SEE YOU IN COURT” — and began working on a revised order. That one was blocked last week by another federal judge in Hawaii. The orders are currently being contested by Washington, Hawaii and Maryland.
In an interview later on Friday, Ferguson said Trump’s new executive order does include some significant revisions, most notably the omission of Iraq from the list of countries impacted by the travel restrictions.
“It no longer applies to green card holders; that’s 500,000 people,” he said. “It no longer applies to those with travel visas; that’s another 50,000 to 100,000 folks.”
But the underlying legal problem remains, he said.
“We agree (the revised order) applies to a more narrow group of individuals, but you’re just violating the rights of a smaller group of folks,” he said. “That does not cure your constitutional problem.”
