Judge blocks Trump bid to halt federal funding for sanctuary cities

NBC News

24-04-2025

A federal judge in California issued an injunction Thursday blocking President Donald Trump's efforts to halt federal funds from going to several cities and counties considered sanctuary jurisdictions.
'The challenged sections in the 2025 Executive Orders and the Bondi Directive that order executive agencies to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funding apportioned to localities by Congress, violate the Constitution's separation of powers principles and the Spending Clause,' U.S. District Judge William Orrick said in his ruling.
'They also violate the Fifth Amendment to the extent they are unconstitutionally vague and violate due process,' while Trump's EOs "violate the Tenth Amendment because they impose coercive condition intended to commandeer local officials into enforcing federal immigration practices and law."
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Trump executive orders and a related directive from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi had been challenged by the city of San Francisco and 15 other cities and counties from across the country.
Orrick had blocked a similar effort by Trump during his first term in office, finding that his executive order was "unconstitutional" and that the plaintiffs "faced irreparable harm absent an injunction." "Here we are again," the judge wrote.
The Justice Department appealed Orrick's earlier decision in 2017, but his ruling was upheld by the appeals court.
A different federal appeals court, however, ruled in a separate suit that the Trump administration can indeed withhold 'grants' to sanctuary cities.
The issue was going to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2021, but the Biden Justice Department dropped the appeal and the matter was dismissed.
Sanctuary cities or states are not official terms - the labels refer to a state, city, county or municipality that has enacted laws that either explicitly or effectively prevent or limit local officials from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
In the current case, the judge noted the Justice Department had argued the plaintiffs' claims are premature 'because the 2025 Executive Orders and the Bondi Directive merely provide guidance for executive agencies reviewing federal funding to sanctuary jurisdictions, and because the Cities and Counties have not yet suffered a loss of funds.'
"This is essentially the same argument it made in 2017," Orrick wrote, while the plaintiffs' claims in the new case appear even more persuasive now.
The cities and counties' 'well-founded fear of enforcement is even stronger than it was in 2017," the judge wrote, and it stems from Trump's executive orders, Bondi's directive and "numerous directives from executive agencies ordering the withholding of funds to localities like the plaintiffs."
He also pointed to " legal action that the Government has already initiated against sanctuary jurisdictions in Illinois and New York, in addition to recent statements from high ranking government officials and the litigation over these issues in the first Trump administration.'
Orrick said the cities and counties had also shown "a likelihood of irreparable harm." "The threat to withhold funding causes them irreparable injury in the form of budgetary uncertainty, deprivation of constitutional rights, and undermining trust between the Cities and Counties and the communities they serve," he wrote.