Anthony Romero
speaker
127 appearances
9 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Jun 2025
Anthony Romero’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
the power of the purse in pulling money from roads and hospitals and schools to pressure them on immigration. And that's got to be challenged in court. The governors and the state attorneys general, especially in the blue states, have enormous power to put up roadblocks.
I think some of the governors are beginning to find their sense of authority in Colorado and New Mexico. How about New York? In New York, we're working on it.
Well, I think the governor's really working with us. I think the mayor is a bit more complicated on the immigrants' rights issue. Eric Adams in New York? I think it's complicated.
For not what we like it to be. For not standing up. Not what we want it to be.
I think on immigrants in particular, I think the governors have enormous power and latitude. They can't obstruct federal immigration enforcement, but they don't have to collude. There are shield laws that I think the governors can also enact for trans kids, for trans individuals. Like you saw Letitia James in New York.
When this one kind of executive order then triggered the shutting down of access to medical care in New York City hospitals with people who had private insurance, the New York attorney general stepped up and said, wait a minute, if you start canceling those appointments, you're going to run afoul of our state laws.
It's fearmongering. It's clear it's fearmongering. It's a card that he played in the election. You saw the ads he ran.
It was clear fear-mongering. Of a community of 1.5 million people who are really under assault, you have over 500 state laws that have been targeted on the trans community. It's really an onslaught the likes of which we haven't seen in generations. And part of what our case, we have both this case and we have the one on the transgender affirming health care, is to make equal protection arguments.
So that was a case we had first in the Supreme Court. We argued the Scrametti case, which is challenging a Tennessee statute that was banning gender-affirming health care for minors. And so we were in court arguing that that violated the equal protection of Tennessee citizens, including parents who are our clients in this case, parents who decide that this isn't the best interest of their case.
No, no. It's always with parents in the loop. Minors don't have the same protections under the law that adults do. That's part of what we're doing in the passport case. If we go back to the passport case, I mean, it's both equal protection because people are subjected to harassment and violence if they're misidentified with the wrong gender on their passports. It's open hunting season for them.
But there's also a free speech right here, David. It's just like, how can the government tell me that I cannot, I can change my name. I can legally change my name. I can change it to Antonia tomorrow. They can't stop me from doing that. So there are good First Amendment arguments also on the passports case as well.
You know, I think the same principles apply, right? It's just that we have to make sure that the government stays out of the business of regulating people's private speech. That is probably my biggest concern right now. That hasn't yet materialized or matured. But it may.
You were not comfortable with that? No. We criticized Facebook and Twitter when they deplatformed Donald Trump. I mean, they kept people like Bolsonaro and Orban on, but they deplatformed Trump. We felt that they were not calling balls and strikes as they saw them. And we applauded them when they replatformed them.
No, I think Facebook is afforded a lot of latitude because it's a private entity. The right to set its terms of service.
You bet. We just took the NRA case a year ago. The NRA came to us saying, saying, you're the best litigation organization on free speech. This was a case of Governor Cuomo and the administration trying to shut down the NRA because they didn't agree with its pro-gun policies. And we saw it as a free speech issue, and we brought that case and won 9-0.
No, the heckler's veto is a problem, right? You have a right to free speech, but you don't have a right to shut down information, debate, discussions. There are limits.
I think the biggest victories had to do with family separation, when we were able to stop them in their tracks on separating families as a deterrent to people coming to this country. It was a massive moment where people from across the political spectrum came together. Laura Bush was tweeting on this.
And it was a moment when we were able to use both the courts and public opinion to kind of put pressure on the Trump administration. Ultimately, rescinding their own kind of policy guidance or zero tolerance guidance on this one. I think the other ones had to do with the U.S. Census when they tried to purge the count of immigrants, of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. Census.
We litigated that twice to the Supreme Court in front of the Roberts Supreme Court and won. So I think that we are— Those are victories. What about defeats? The building of the wall. That was litigation we brought to try to stop the misappropriation of funds from one agency to build the wall in the South, and that just petered out. It was a hard case.
It was a hard case because you're dealing with the ability for the government to enforce its borders, which is really recognized by the courts and the general public.
Showing 81–100 of 127 · page 5 of 7
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