Judge blocks Trump’s executive order on denying funding to sanctuary cities

A federal judge issued an injunction to permanently block President Donald Trump’s executive order to deny funding to cities that refused to cooperate with federal immigration officials, after finding the order unconstitutional.

The ruling by District Judge William H. Orrick in San Francisco comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the city of San Francisco and nearby Santa Clara County, and follows a temporary halt on the order that the judge issued in April.

Orrick, in his summary of the case Monday, found that the Trump administration’s efforts to move local officials to cooperate with its efforts to deport undocumented immigrants violated the separation of powers doctrine as well as the Fifth and 10th amendments.

“The Constitution vests the spending powers in Congress, not the President, so the Executive Order cannot constitutionally place new conditions on federal funds. Further, the 10th Amendment requires that conditions on federal funds be unambiguous and timely made; that they bear some relation to the funds at issue; and that they not be unduly coercive,” the judge wrote. “Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration enforcement strategy of which the President disapproves.”

In court earlier this year, the government’s lawyers had said that cities were overreacting to the order because federal officials had not yet moved to withhold funding from them.

The ruling marks another blow to the Trump administration by the judicial branch. Other federal judges have reined in the administration’s travel ban after questioning its constitutionality. Those rulings are still winding their way through federal appeals courts.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera described Orrick’s decision as a victory for the “rule of law.”