Second Circuit Upholds Fed's Anti-Sanctuary Cities Conditions

Steven D. Schwinn, UIC John Marshall Law School

The Second Circuit last week upheld the Justice Department's efforts to clamp down on sanctuary cities against by-now-familiar constitutional and statutory challenges. The ruling conflicts with cases from the Third, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits, and, as if there were ever any doubt, puts the issue on track for Supreme Court review.

The case, like the others, arose when AG Sessions unilaterally imposed three conditions on local governments receiving law-enforcement grants under DOJ's Byrne program. Sessions required grant recipients (1) to comply with federal law prohibiting state and local restrictions on their officers from communicating with federal authorities about a person's immigration status (in 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1373), (2) to provide federal authorities with release dates of unauthorized aliens, and (3) to give federal immigration officers access to incarcerated unauthorized aliens.

The conditions were designed to clamp down on sanctuary jurisdictions.

State and local governments sued, arguing that the conditions violated the separation of powers (because only Congress, not the Executive Branch, has authority to place conditions on federal funds), the Tenth Amendment (because 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1373 tells state and local governemnts what they can't do (restrict communication between their officers and the feds) in violation of the anti-commandeering principle, and the Administrative Procedure Act (becuase the conditions, even if authorized by statute, are arbitrary and capricious). 

The Second Circuit is the first circuit court to side with the government. 

The court ruled that the Byrne program, in 34 U.S.C. Sec. 10153, gave the AG broad authority to implement the program, including broad enough authority to impose the three conditions. As a result, the court held that the conditions didn't violate the APA's prohibition on unlawful agency action or the separation of powers.

As to the first condition--the one that requires Byrne grant recipients to certify comliance with Section 1373--the court rejected the plaintiffs' Tenth Amendment challenge. The court held that the amount of money at issue wasn't enough to "turn pressure into compulsion" for the plaintiffs to comply with Section 1373, and therefore certification of compliance with Section 1373 was a constitutionally permissible condition on the receipt of federal funds.