District Court Hands Sweeping Victory to Sanctuary Jurisdictions

Judge Edgardo Ramos (S.D.N.Y.) this week issued a sweeping ruling against the Trump Administration and its attempts to clamp down on sanctuary jurisdictions. The ruling is a significant victory for sanctuary jurisdictions, and a blow to the Trump Administration.

We last posted on sanctuary jurisdiction litigation here.

The case involves the states of New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Washington; the commonwealths of Massachusetts and Virginia; and the city of New York. These jurisdictions sued the Administration to halt its unilateral anti-sanctuary conditions on their DOJ JAG/Byrne grants. In particular, they sought to stop the Administration from enforcing its three conditions on grant-receiving jurisdictions, on threat of losing their grants: (1) the "notice condition," which requires jurisdictions to give advance notice to DHS of the scheduled release date and time of aliens housed in state or local correctional facilities; (2) the "access condition," which requires jurisdictions to give federal agents access to aliens in state or local correctional facilities in order to question them about their immigration status; and (3) the "1373 compliance" condition, which requires jurisdictions to comply with 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1373, which, in turn, prohibits state or local governments from prohibiting their officials from communicating with the federal government about the immigration status of detainees.

Importantly, former AG Sessions imposed these conditions himself, without specific congressional authority (or any congressional action).

The court ruled that DOJ lacked statutory authority to impose the conditions, and thus acted ultra vires and in violation of the separation of powers in imposing them unilaterally (that is, without specific congressional authority). It also ruled that the conditions were arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

As to Section 1373, the court said that it violated the anti-commandeering principle, based on Murphy v. NCAA. (The anti-commandeering principle says that the federal government can't compel a state to act in its sovereign capacity. Recall that the Court held in Murphy extended this principle to when the government compels a state not to act--as in Section 1373.)

The court granted the plaintiffs' request for mandamus relief and ordered the government to reissue their Byrne grant award documents without the conditions. It also enjoined the government from imposing the conditions against any of the plaintiffs in the future.