Chicago Sues DOJ Over Sanctuary Cities Conditions

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

The City of Chicago filed suit this week against the U.S. Department of Justice over the Department's conditions on a federal law-enforcement grant designed to clamp down on sanctuary cities. The suit is just the latest escalation in the running disputes between "sanctuary" jurisdictions and the Trump Administration. We posted most recently here.

Chicago challenges DOJ-added conditions on the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program that, it says, exceed DOJ authority, violate federalism principles, and interfere with the City's long-standing and effective Welcoming Policy, now codified as the Welcoming City Ordinance. DOJ announced some time ago that it would require grant recipients to comply with Section 1373 (which requires state and local authorities to communicate with federal authorities regarding the immigration status of individuals in their custody). More recently, DOJ announced that it would also require recipients to give the federal government notice of release of any individual at least 48 hours before the scheduled release (the notice condition) and to give federal immigration officials unlimited access to local police stations and law enforcement facilities to interrogate any suspected non-citizen held there (the access condition).

Chicago claims as an initial matter that it complies with Section 1373. That's because its Welcoming Policy prohibits officers from collecting immigration information from individuals in the first place, not from communicating information to federal officers. "[T]hus there is no information for the City to share (or restrict from sharing)." And "[m]oreover, if Chicago officials happen to come across immigration status information, they are not restricted from sharing it with federal officials."

As to the conditions themselves, Chicago argues that they exceed the grant requirements that Congress wrote into the Byrne JAG program; that only Congress, and not the Executive Branch, can add or change the statutory conditions on the program; and that the conditions violate federal conditioned-spending rules. As to the last, Chicago says that the conditions "are not germane to the Byrne JAG funds it has received for over a decade," that the notice and access conditions would require the City to violate the Fourth Amendment (by requiring that the City continue to hold individuals without probable cause for 48 hours, that the access condition, that the conditions are ambiguous, and that they are unconstitutionally coercive. The City also argues that each condition unconstitutionally commandeers it and its officers.

The case is in the Northern District of Illinois.