Sanctuary case:
Plaintiffs chide president over his Twitter attacks on judge, court.
President Trump’s Twitter barrage directed at a federal judge who blocked his attempt to cut off funding to immigrant-protective sanctuary cities drew a sharp response Wednesday from officials in San Francisco and Santa Clara County, who were celebrating their firstround legal victory.
“Attacking the courts shows this president doesn’t understand, or is simply ignoring, the Constitution,” said San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera. “Maybe you can run a business that way, but you can’t run a country like that.”
David Cortese, president of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, said Trump’s “latest reckless attack on our independent judiciary should frighten all Americans.”
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William Orrick III of San Francisco issued a nationwide injunction against Trump’s Jan. 25 executive order, which called for withdrawing funds from local governments that refused to cooperate with federal immigration officers.
Though lawyers for Trump’s Justice Department argued that the order applied to a small number of federal grants and required local governments to provide information already required by law, Orrick said the wording of Trump’s order, and the president’s public statements, were far broader. He said San Francisco and Santa Clara County faced the possible loss of hundreds of millions of dollars and were likely to prove that the order exceeded Trump’s constitutional authority over federal spending.
Trump lashed out in a series of tweets Wednesday, starting at 3:30 a.m. PDT. Although Orrick is a trial judge, the president attributed his ruling to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which would consider the administration’s appeal of the decision.
In February, a Ninth Circuit panel denied enforcement of Trump’s order blocking travel to the United States by residents of seven nations whose population is almost entirely Muslim. Another panel of the court, and an appeals court in Richmond, Va., have scheduled hearings next month on a somewhat narrower travel ban that applies to six nations.
“First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities — both ridiculous rulings,” Trump tweeted. “See you in the Supreme Court!”
He also wrote that the Ninth Circuit “has a terrible record of being overturned (close to 80%),” and accused plaintiffs in the latest case of “judge-shopping” by filing their suits in the circuit’s nine-state region. Later Wednesday, Trump told the Washington Examiner that anyone who wants to sue his administration “immediately runs to the Ninth Circuit, because they know that’s, like, semiautomatic” to rule in their favor.
San Francisco and Santa Clara County, the plaintiffs in the sanctuary-cities case, are located in the court’s jurisdiction. And Herrera scoffed at the claim of judge shopping.
“That’s a red herring from an administration that is wrong on the law,” the city attorney said. “You can’t be forum-shopping when you file in the very jurisdiction you reside in. We’re confident the outcome would have been the same in any federal court.” Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko