Is Section 1373 Unconstitutional?

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

President Trump's EO on sanctuary cities says that "the Attorney General and the Secretary . . . shall ensure that jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1373 (sanctuary jurisdiction) are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary."

The provision is almost certainly over-broad, in that it conditions apparently all "Federal grants" on compliance with Section 1373, running afoul of both the relatedness prong and the pressure-into-compulsion test for conditioned federal spending.

But is 1373 itself unconstitutional? In particular, does 1373 violate the non-commandeering principle?

Section 1373 reads:

(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.

(b) Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, no person or agency may prohibit, or in any way restrict, a Federal, State, or local government entity from doing any of the following with respect to information regarding the immigration status, lawful or unlawful, or any individual:

(1) Sending such information to, or requesting or receiving such information from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

(2) Maintaining such information.

(3) Exchanging such information with any other Federal, State, or local government entity.

(c) The Immigration and Naturalization Service shall respond to an inquiry by a Federal, State, or local government agency, seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual within the jurisdiction of the agency for any purpose authorized by law, by providing the requested verification or status information.

The provision--which prohibits action (it prohibits prohibitions) by state and local governments, but doesn't require action--is a pretty transparent attempt to try to work around the anti-commandeering principle. (Doing the same thing directly--by requiring state and local officers to report--would obviously violate the anti-commandeering principle.) Does that save it from commandeering?

Jane Chong, in a thoughtful post over at Lawfare, says maybe--or at least "the answer is not as open-and-shut as the experts insist it is."

If she's right--and she makes a good argument--maybe the problem isn't with transparent work-arounds like 1373. Maybe, instead, the problem is with the anti-commandeering principle itself. In light of 1373 (and a similar provision in the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992, which Chong discusses), maybe "anti-commandeering" suffers from the same problem that another Tenth Amendment principle--"areas of traditional government functions"--suffered from between National League of Cities v. Usery and Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority: It's unworkable. And maybe the solution is the same as in Garcia: Abandon it, and leave the issue to the political process. (After all, there's nothing in the Tenth Amendment that says anything about commandeering.)