Immigration advocates filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the legality of a petition opposing in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. The petition would put the new Maryland law to voters in a referendum. Filed by Casa de Maryland, a group of students, a parent and a teacher against the state Board of Elections, the suit points to Maryland’s constitution, which says a law that appropriates funding to a government program — as the Maryland Dream Act does — cannot be put to a referendum “precisely to prevent the kind of disruption in government programs and operations that the filing of this petition has caused,” said Joseph Sandler, attorney for the group.
The group also says that more than 57,000 of the 108,923 petition signatures the state body validated on July 22 are invalid. That would put the total number of signatures below the 55,726 needed to put the tuition measure
on the ballot in November 2012.
Signatures that the group says are invalid include 43,811 obtained using a computer program that filled in petitioners’ information automatically, 3,840 on petitions that didn’t include the text of the law and another 473 that had no signature, according to the legal complaint.
Some signatures also didn’t match the petitioners’ names on voter records, Sandler said.
Donna Duncan, election management director at the Maryland Board of Elections, said the board hasn’t seen the lawsuit yet and declined to comment.
“It’s a frivolous lawsuit and an act of desperation,” said state Del. Patrick McDonough, R-Baltimore County, one of two Maryland lawmakers behind the petition.
The argument that the law is an appropriation is invalid, said Del. Neil Parrott, R-Washington County,
the other lawmaker pushing the petition. If it were true, “the attorney general would have probably turned us away at the very beginning,” he said. “There’s no money figure in the bill.”
McDonough also refuted the suit’s claims about the online petition. “It’s a legal document, just like any affidavit, and the Internet program is a popular one.”
Parrott’s website, mdpetitions.com, which was used to collect the online signatures, is now asking opponents of the law to donate money to help fight the suit.
“Marylanders all across the state worked very, very diligently to get the number of signatures that were turned in,” Parrott said.
McDonough said 60 percent of the signers were independents and Democrats, rather than Republicans. He criticized Casa de Maryland for fighting the democratic process.
“How un-American and outrageous can you get?”
Casa de Maryland did not return requests for comment.
Although the law was supposed to take effect July 1, it has been suspended pending results of the referendum.
