District Court Halts Government's Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Against Philadelphia

Steven D. Schwinn, John Marshall Law School

Judge Michael Baylson (E.D. Pa.) granted a preliminary injunction yesterday against the government's enforcement of it's anti-sanctuary cities moves against Philadelphia, and enjoyed AG Sessions from denying the city's Byrne JAG grant for FY 2017.

The ruling is a major victory for the city, and a significant strike against the federal crack-down on sanctuary cities. It follows a similar, but less sweeping, ruling in the Chicago case.

Judge Baylson ruled that AG Sessions's order to condition DOJ Byrne JAG grants on Philadelphia's agreement to give federal authorities notice when city officials detain an unauthorized alien (the "notice condition"), to give federal authorities access to city jails (the "access condition"), and to certify that it complies with 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1373 likely violate federal law and the Constitution.

In particular, Judge Baylson ruled that the conditions violate the Administrative Procedure Act, because they're arbitrary and capricious. He also ruled that they "are improper under settled principles of the Spending Clause, the Tenth Amendment, and principles of federalism." On the constitutional issues, he said that the conditions are not sufficiently related to the purposes of the Byrne JAG grant program (in violation of the conditioned-spending test under South Dakota v. Dole), because "[i]mmigration law [the purpose of the conditions] has nothing to do with the enforcement of local criminal laws [the purpose of Philadelphia's Byrne JAG grant]." He also said that the conditions were ambiguous (also in violation of South Dakota v. Dole), because "the Access and 48-hours Notice Conditions cannot have been unambiguously authorized by Congress if they were never statutorily authorized," and the "malleable language [of Section 1373] does not provide the 'clear notice that would be needed to attach such a condition to a State's receipt of . . . funds.'" (The court also said, but "[w]ithout specifically so holding," that "Philadelphia is likely to succeed on the merits of its Tenth Amendment challenge" to the conditions, because the notice and access conditions "impose affirmative obligations on Philadelphia, with associated costs of complying with such conditions," and because the compliance condition (on 1373) "would inherently prevent Philadelphia from, among other things, disciplining an employee for choosing to spend her free time or work time assisting in the enforcement of federal immigration laws" (and thus commandeers the city).

Finally, Judge Baylson noted that Philadelphia isn't a sanctuary city, anyway--at least not in the way defined by federal law. In particular, he wrote that the city "substantially complies with Section 1373."