When a federal appeals court cleared the path for Texas Senate Bill 4 to take effect — lifting an injunction that had blocked the law since 2024 — it did not end the legal battle. It restarted it.
On Monday, a coalition of civil rights organizations filed a new federal lawsuit seeking to halt portions of the law before it can be enforced. The clock is running: SB 4 is scheduled to go into effect on May 15, giving courts less than two weeks to act if the new challenge is to prevent its implementation.
Senate Bill 4 represents one of the most direct challenges any state has mounted to the established constitutional framework governing immigration enforcement in the United States.
The law creates a state-level criminal offense for crossing into Texas from Mexico illegally. It also grants Texas state magistrates the authority to issue deportation orders against individuals convicted under the law — a power that has historically belonged exclusively to the federal government.
Courts have consistently held that immigration enforcement falls within the federal government’s domain. Texas Republicans who authored and passed SB 4 are directly challenging that precedent, arguing the state has both the right and the obligation to act when federal enforcement is insufficient to protect its border communities.
What the New Lawsuit Targets
The coalition — comprising the Texas Civil Rights Project, the national ACLU, and the ACLU of Texas — is not challenging the entirety of SB 4 in its new filing. Instead, it is targeting four specific provisions it argues are constitutionally indefensible:
The criminalization of re-entry into the United States — including for individuals who have since obtained legal status, such as a green card. The authority granted to state magistrates to issue deportation orders. The criminal penalty for failing to comply with a magistrate-issued deportation order. And the requirement that state magistrates continue a prosecution even when a defendant has a pending federal immigration case — such as an active asylum claim.
The groups argue that federal law must preempt SB 4 under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which establishes that federal law is the supreme law of the land when it conflicts with state law.
“S.B. 4 is not only unconstitutional, but a vile law that uses our Texas resources to harm communities across our state,” said Kate Gibson Kumar, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project. “Our fight against S.B. 4 isn’t over until justice wins.”
Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, was equally direct.
“Every court to have reached the merits of laws like S.B. 4 has found them to be unconstitutional,” Wofsy said. “We will keep fighting it until it is permanently struck down.”
Adriana Piñon, legal director at the ACLU of Texas, framed the stakes in terms of the practical effect on communities.
“S.B. 4 would transform our police and judges into immigration agents — threatening neighbors who have families here, who have lived here for years, even those who have legal status,” she said. “Immigration enforcement is exclusively the federal government’s arena, and no state has ever claimed the power Texas threatens to wield here.”
How the Law Got to This Point
SB 4 was passed by the Texas legislature during a period of elevated migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border under the Biden administration. From the moment of its passage, it faced immediate legal challenge — with the Biden DOJ joining civil rights groups in seeking to block its enforcement.
A federal court issued an injunction in 2024 that prevented the law from taking effect while litigation continued. That injunction remained in place until last week, when a federal appeals court vacated it — concluding that the plaintiffs in that case did not have standing to sue. The ruling did not reach the merits of the law itself, leaving the underlying constitutional questions unresolved.
That procedural outcome cleared the path for SB 4 to take effect — but it also opened the door for a new lawsuit, filed by plaintiffs who can demonstrate standing.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s DOJ withdrew from the earlier Biden-era challenge to the law in 2025, aligning federal immigration enforcement posture with Texas rather than against it.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
The law is scheduled to take effect on May 15 barring court intervention. Whether the new lawsuit produces an emergency injunction before that date will depend on how quickly a federal court moves to review the filing and assess whether the new plaintiffs have established sufficient grounds for relief.
If the law does go into effect, Texas police officers would be authorized to arrest individuals suspected of crossing the border illegally — and state magistrates would gain authority to order those convicted to leave the country. The practical and legal implications of those powers being exercised in real cases — including cases involving individuals with pending federal asylum claims — would almost certainly generate additional litigation regardless of Monday’s outcome.
The legal battle over Texas Senate Bill 4 reflects one of the sharpest fault lines in American immigration policy: the question of whether states can take enforcement action that has historically belonged exclusively to the federal government. Civil rights groups say the answer is unambiguous — they cannot — and are asking a federal court to say so before May 15. Texas passed the law precisely to challenge that answer. The courts will now have to give one.
