AFL-CIO, et al. v. Chertoff, et al.

Case Updates

The parties who challenged the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) ‘No-Match’ rule agreed to withdraw their case after DHS rescinded the controversial rule.

Litigated from 2007 to 2009, the ‘No-Match’ rule would have imposed new, onerous procedures on employers that receive letters from the Social Security Administration (SSA) stating that social security numbers used by their workers do not match records in the SSA database. NCLC first challenged the rule and obtained a preliminary injunction from the district court because DHS failed to complete the economic impact assessment that is required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act. In 2008, DHS published a supplemental final ‘No-Match’ rule that was unchanged from its previous rule, and NCLC again challenged the rule in district court. NCLC argued that DHS ignored its own experts’ economic impact assessments, failed to consider how the rule would affect small organizations and governments, understated the compliance costs, and failed to account for the major changes in the economy since September 2008.