In a lawsuit brought on behalf of 30 pharmacists in the state of New York, The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has ruled that the New York education law § 6805(1)(6), which states that only U.S Citizens or Legal Permanent Resident’s are eligible to obtain a pharmacist’s license in New York, is unconstitutional. The Plaintiffs are a group of non-immigrant aliens who have been authorized by the federal government to reside and work as pharmacists. All currently reside in New York and are licensed pharmacists there.
The case involves a state regulatory scheme that seeks to prohibit some legally admitted aliens from doing the very thing that the federal government indicated they could do when they came to the U.S—work in the United States. In response, the plaintiffs sued various state officials responsible for enforcing the law in question in the United States, with the plaintiff’s citing the law as unconstitutional due to it’s violation of the Equal Protection and Supremacy Clauses of the United States Constitution. The Second Circuit agreed, stating that there were no compelling reasons for the statute’s discrimination based on alienage, therefore ruling the statute unconstitutional.
