WASHINGTON -- Civil rights groups sued Michigan Secretary Of State Ruth Johnson (R) on Wednesday for blocking driver's licenses for undocumented young people given deportation relief by the president. Denying the group licenses makes many unable to use their newly-granted work authorization, attend school or simply get around.

The American Civil Liberties Union and National Immigration Law Center filed the Michigan suit on behalf of three undocumented young people and a youth immigrant group, One Michigan.

Receiving driver's licenses is a significant issue to the estimated 1.76 million young undocumented immigrants -- often called Dreamers -- in Michigan who may be eligible for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Although there are no breakdowns for how many young people in Michigan have been granted deferred action, 102,965 people were approved nationwide as of Dec. 13.

The two-year deferred action means that in most states, those undocumented immigrants can apply for driver's licenses.

But Michigan, Arizona and Nebraska governments have refused to grant licenses to Dreamers who have been granted deportation reprieve.

"They're really unable to work and to use benefits of that status because they can't drive," said Karen Tumlin, an attorney for the National Immigration Law Center. "Michigan winter is not exactly where you'd want to walk to work."

In Arizona, the decision seemed partially political. Gov. Jan Brewer (R), an immigration hardliner, announced in August that the state would deny driver's licenses to deferred action recipients. The civil rights groups filed a complaint in Arizona in November along the same grounds as the suit in Michigan.

Attorneys with the ACLU and the National Immigration Law Center said Michigan seems somewhat different -- possibly just confused, rather than trying to thwart the policy for political reasons. Johnson, the secretary of state, told her staffers in November not to grant driver's licenses to deferred action beneficiaries. Her spokeswoman, Gisgie Gendreau, told the Detroit Free Press at the time that they were not allowed, by law, to grant licenses.

"Michigan law requires legal presence, that someone be here legally," Gendreau told the Free Press. "The federal government has said that DACA does not grant legal status, so we can't issue a driver's license or state ID to DACA participants."

Reached for comment on the lawsuit Wednesday afternoon, Gendreau said the state will continue to rely on the government's definition of legal status for its policy on driver's licenses. She pointed to a few documents that state deferred action does not confer an individual with legal status, including the June 15 memo by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that announced the policy. "This memorandum confers no substantive right, immigration status or pathway to citizenship," that memo reads.

The attorneys said they are hopeful that their lawsuit will convince state leaders that they are misunderstanding the policy. Although deferred action isn't the same as an immigrant visa, it does allow the undocumented beneficiary to stay in the United States legally, which they argue means the Michigan secretary of state is wrong.

"It's contradicted by federal law," Michael Tan, an attorney at the ACLU, said. "Although states have the authority to issue driver's licenses as a general matter, they don't get to decide who is authorized to be here in the country or not, that's up to the federal government."

Tan said given Michigan's general openness toward immigrants, its leaders may be more amenable to changing its policy than those in states like Arizona.

"I don't think that this is like Arizona, where Gov. Brewer very openly came out and denounced the DACA program as back-door amnesty and described her order as being necessary to make sure 'illegal people' wouldn't get licenses in her state," he said. "I think Michigan is different, the governor's office has worked and made a real commitment to make Michigan a welcoming place for immigrants. This is really about a fundamental misunderstanding of federal law."

This article has been updated to include a response from the Michigan secretary of state's office and to clarify that Michael Tan intended to say states have the authority to issue driver's licenses as a general, rather than federal, matter.

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• The Naturalization Act of 1790

  The Naturalization Act of 1790 was our country's first set of laws dealing with citizenship. Applicants had to be "<a href="http://rs6.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=001/llsl001.db&recNum=226 " target="_hplink">a free white person</a>" of "good moral character." This excluded indentured servants and slaves. Good moral character was substantiated by establishing residence for at least one year in the state from where he was applying, and at least two years of residence in the country. The Naturalization Act of 1795 would extend that requirement to five years, and is still standard today.

• The Fourteenth Amendment, 1868

  A Reconstruction Amendment that was added to the U.S. Constitution following the Civil War, the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment establishes for the first time that children born on U.S. soil would be conferred U.S. citizenship regardless of their parent's citizenship status, race, or place of birth. Last year, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) introduced the <a href="http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr140 " target="_hplink">Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011</a> to Congress, and challenged this. The bill would require that at least one parent be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident for a child to be granted citizenship. According to the <a href="http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h140/text " target="_hplink">bill's text</a>, the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011 would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, and "clarify those classes of individuals born in the United States who are nationals and citizens of the United States at birth." Prior to this, Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/26/nathan-deal-georgia-lawma_n_207485.html " target="_hplink">introduced</a> a similar <a href="http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h1868/show" target="_hplink">bill</a> in 2009.

• The Naturalization Act of 1870

  The Naturalization Act of 1870<a href="http://thepoliticsofimmigration.org/pages/chronology.htm " target="_hplink"> explicitly extended</a> naturalization laws to "aliens of African nativity and persons of African descent." This meant that for the first time, African-American children would be conferred citizenship upon birth. Asian immigrants and other people of color are excluded per the Naturalization Acts of 1790 and 1795.

• The Page Act of 1875

  Named after Republican Representative Horace F. Page, this is the first U.S. federal immigration law to explicitly prohibit the immigration of a particular group: persons of Asian descent. Primarily meant to limit Chinese immigrant labor and prostitution, the Page Act prohibited the immigration of: (1) contracted labor from "China, Japan, or any Oriental country" that was not "free and voluntary," (2) Chinese prostitution and (3) criminals and women who would engage in prostitution. Ultimately, the <a href="http://www.uchastings.edu/racism-race/pageact.html " target="_hplink">Page Act</a> severely <a href="http://immigration-online.org/228-page-act-united-states-1875.html " target="_hplink">restricted</a> the immigration of Asian women. Only 136 of the the nearly 40,000 Chinese immigrants who arrived in the months before the bill's enforcement were women. And, it would pave the way for the Chinese Exclusion Act. In this picture, Michael Lin, chair of the 1882 Project, a coalition of rights groups seeking a statement of regret over that year's Chinese Exclusion Act, speaks on May 26, 2011 in Washington, DC, at the US House of Representatives in front of a reproduction of a 19th-century sign that aimed at rousing up sentiment against Chinese Americans. Lawmakers introduced a bill that would offer an official statement of regret for the act, which banned further immigration of Chinese to the United States and ended citizenship rights for ethnic Chinese. (AFP PHOTO/SHAUN TANDON).

• The Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882

  Signed by President Chester A. Arthur, the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/resources/archives/seven/chinxact.htm " target="_hplink">Chinese Exclusion Act</a> was the first federal immigration law to prohibit immigration on the basis of race. The bill barred all Chinese laborers, skilled and unskilled, from immigrating to the U.S. for ten years. It was made permanent by 1903, and was not lifted until the 1943 Magnuson Act. The 1898 Supreme Court <a href="http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/exclusion.html " target="_hplink">decision</a> in <em>United States v. Wong Kim Ark</em> finally extended naturalization laws to persons of Chinese descent by ruling that anyone born in the United States was indeed a U.S. citizen. This editorial cartoon from 1882 shows a Chinese man being excluded from entry to the "Golden Gate of Liberty." The sign next to the iron door reads, "Notice--Communist, Nihilist, Socialist, Fenian & Hoodlum welcome. But no admittance to Chinamen." At the bottom, the caption reads, "THE ONLY ONE BARRED OUT. Enlightened American Statesman--'We must draw the line <em>somewhere</em>, you know.'" (Image Source: Frank Leslie's illustrated newspaper, vol. 54 (1882 April 1), p. 96. [Public domain], via <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_only_one_barred_out_cph.3b48680.jpg" target="_hplink">Wikimedia Commons</a>).

• The Naturalization Act of 1906

  The Naturalization Act of 1906 further <a href="http://www.understandingrace.org/history/gov/eastern_southern_immigration.html" target="_hplink">defined</a> the naturalization process: the ability to speak English was made a <a href="http://www.enotes.com/topic/Naturalization_Act_of_1906" target="_hplink">requisite</a> for immigrants to adjust their status.

• The Immigration Act of 1924

  U.S. President Coolidge signed this U.S. federal <a href="http://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/ImmigrationAct " target="_hplink">bill</a> into law. It capped the number of immigrants who could be admitted entry to the U.S. and barred immigration of persons who were not eligible for naturalization. And, as the Naturalization Act of 1790 required, an immigrant had to be white in order to naturalize. The quotas varied by country. Image Source: Flickr Creative Commons, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/nycmarines/6306315902/" target="_hplink">NYCMarines</a>.

• The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (The McCarran-Walter Act)

  The <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:zwaVG82lZisJ:www-rohan.sdsu.edu/dept/polsciwb/brianl/docs/1952McCarranWaltersAct.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjEwx76FIBTixZAfyncZz-1CSuSeciv5qB6vvWTrUfW58XRpXq8zkpnI57XSuuG5Bu-WSySGbEhxYvZxP7y6qDQuOsDhgDa6qUqUaJ8F4imTzKJsVtppHc_-eew2dK6vGhoIUZs&sig=AHIEtbTNQ5GFiNMVS-xyThq8VVSj_gG9KA " target="_hplink">McCarran-Walter Act</a> kept up the controversial Immigration Act of 1924, but <a href="http://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/ImmigrationAct" target="_hplink">formally</a> ended Asian exclusion.

• Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

  When President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, it <a href="http://library.uwb.edu/guides/USimmigration/1965_immigration_and_nationality_act.html" target="_hplink">abolished</a> the quota system that favored immigration from Europe and limited immigration from Asia and South America.

• Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996

  The 1996 <a href="http://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/PUBLAW/HTML/PUBLAW/0-0-0-10948.html " target="_hplink">Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act</a> (IIRIRA) is a piece of legislation that <a href="http://library.uwb.edu/guides/usimmigration/1996_illegal_immigration_reform_and_immigrant_responsibility_act.html " target="_hplink">defined</a> an array of issues to do with legal and illegal immigration -- from outlining how border patrol agents should administer visa processing, to the minutiae of how to handle deportation proceedings -- IIRIRA established enforcement and patrolling practices.