Texas suit to block refugees slips again

Back in November, after 130 people died in Paris terrorist attacks, Gov. Greg Abbott fired off a letter to President Barack Obama saying Texas would allow no more Syrian refugees to resettle here for fear that terrorists might be among them.

It turned out the governor didn’t have the authority to block those resettlements, so Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit to accomplish the same thing.

Now, for a second time, U.S. District Judge David C. Godbey of Dallas has ruled that courts don’t have that power, either.

There may be a terrorism risk, Godbey wrote in a Monday ruling, but in the United States “it is the federal executive that is charged with assessing and mitigating that risk, not the states and not the courts.”

Texas failed to prove a “substantial threat of irreparable injury” from resettlements, and has “no viable cause of action” against the federal government, the judge wrote.

Godbey didn’t toss the suit out, but he still could. Monday’s ruling was on the state’s request for a preliminary injunction to block Syrian refugees.

Paxton’s office has to decide whether to continue pushing the lawsuit.

From the record so far, that would seem to be a waste of taxpayer money.

This story was originally published February 9, 2016 at 5:37 PM with the headline "Texas suit to block refugees slips again."