Trump v. N.Y., Part 1,657

Breaking with other federal appellate panels, New York’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals is irresponsibly backing the Trump administration’s attempt to withhold millions of dollars in crucial law enforcement grants to localities on the ground that they are insufficiently deferential to Washington immigration authorities.

Adding insult to indiscriminate injury, the grant program in question is named after Edward Byrne, the NYPD rookie assassinated in his police cruiser by contract killers while he guarded the home of an immigrant witness.

In 2017, Trump’s Justice Department decided to turn basic lifesaving funding to local police departments into a cudgel to force them to toe the line on immigration enforcement. Unless New York and other cities handed over more information on undocumented individuals in their midst, the feds — yes, the same feds who claim to care about states’ rights and federal overreach — would cut them off.

In December 2018, rightly citing “unlawful conditions that violate the separation of powers,” Manhattan Federal Judge Edgardo Ramos issued a permanent injunction against the rules. The logic of that lower court ruling was essentially affirmed by three appeals circuits.

Wednesday, Judges Reena Raggi, José Cabranes and Ralph Winter looked at the very same laws and okayed the linkage of money meant to pay the salaries of emergency responders and aid drug prosecutions to an unrelated policy preference of the current president.

We would urge the Supreme Court to resolve the split between circuits and save New York from this piece of federal tyranny, but these days, we must be careful what we wish for.