DOJ Tightens Sanctuary Cities EO and Moves to Reconsider Court's Injunction

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

AG Jeff Sessions issued a memo yesterday tightening President Trumps "sanctuary cities" executive order. The government then asked Judge Orrick to reconsider his earlier preliminary injunction halting the EO.

We posted on Judge Orrick's order here, with links to earlier posts.

Sessions's memo specifies that the government can only withhold certain DOJ and DHS grants (and not all federal grants) from sanctuary cities. Moreover, he wrote that DOJ will apply a certification requirement (putting the grant recipients on notice that they could lose funds if they "willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373" (see below)) "to any existing grant administered by the Office of Justice Programs and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services that expressly contains this certification condition and to future grants for which the Department is statutorily authorized to impose such a condition."

This portion of the memo is designed to satisfy the clear-notice requirement, the relatedness requirement, and no-pressure-into-compulsion requirement for conditioned federal spending.

Sessions's memo also defined "sanctuary jurisdiction" (for the first time) as "jurisdictions that 'willfully refuse to comply with section 1373.'" This portion of the memo is designed to exempt jurisdictions that do not "willfully refuse to comply with section 1373," including some that have sued the government.

At the same time, the government asked Judge Orrick to revise or lift his earlier preliminary injunction. The government's argument is that Sessions's memo takes care of all the likely legal problems that Judge Orrick identified (the conditions for federal spending, mentioned above) and leaves the plaintiffs with no standing.