In another legal setback, a judge ruled that Donald Trump’s threats to cut federal funding to so-called sancturary cities is “unconstitutional on its face.”
U.S. District Judge William Orrick Monday permanently blocked Trump’s executive order that sought cities’ assistance in arresting, detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants.
The Trump administration had threatened to cut federal law enforcement grants from cities or counties that fought Trump’s efforts to combat undocumented immigration and said it would publicly shame localities that failed to comply with attempts to increase deportations.
“The counties have demonstrated that the executive order has caused and will cause them constitutional injuries by violating the separation of powers doctrine and depriving them of their Tenth and Fifth Amendment rights,” Orrick wrote.
The city and county of San Francisco and Santa Clara County argued that cooperating with immigration authorities in its efforts to deport immigrants would hurt its own law enforcement efforts, especially among immigrant communities.
RELATED: Orrick upholds ruling against Trump punishing ‘sanctuary’ cities
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee applauded the ruling, declaring the city “is and will remain a sanctuary city. We know that sanctuary cities are safer, healthier and more productive places to live.”
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who filed two lawsuits against the Trump administration, called the decision “a victory for the American people” and said the case was “a check on the president’s abuse of power.”
“This executive order was unconstitutional before the ink on it was even dry,” Herrera said in a statement. “This president and his administration have been trying to twist facts, stoke fears and demonize immigrants to score cheap political points. The American people are too smart for that.”
“The only way to stop a bully is to stand up to him. That’s what San Francisco has done,” said Herrera.
Orrick strongly considered Trump’s own statements and threats in writing his ruling, including an instance where the president said he would use the executive order as “a weapon” against jurisdictions that disagreed with his policies.
A lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice argued during a hearing before Orrick in April that the executive order applied to only a few grants for Santa Clara County and possibly no money for San Francisco.
But the judge disagreed, saying in his rulings that the order was written broadly to “reach all federal grants” and potentially jeopardized hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to San Francisco and Santa Clara.
He cited comments by the president and Attorney General Jeff Sessions as evidence that the order was intended to target a wide array of federal funding. And he said the president himself had called it a “weapon” to use against recalcitrant cities.
The move, which could result in the jurisdictions being added to a list of five other cities and counties the government says are violating federal law, widens the effort by President Donald Trump to cut money to so-called sanctuary cities. His administration says these places shelter immigrants living in the country illegally.
The DOJ said that it would appeal Orrick’s decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Ten days after Trump’s Inauguration, San Francisco became the first entity to sue Trump over his executive order to strip federal funding from “sanctuary jurisdictions.” Santa Clara County and other local governments soon followed.
San Francisco had about $2 billion at stake. That included $1.2 billion in annual operating funds, or about 13 percent of San Francisco’s budget; and another $800 million in multi-year federal grants that are not part of the annual operating budget and used primarily for large infrastructure projects, like bridges, roads and public transportation.
That lawsuit is the first of two that Herrera has brought against the Trump administration over federal funding for sanctuary cities.
The second lawsuit, filed Aug. 11, seeks to invalidate grant conditions that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions separately sought to place on a group of U.S. Department of Justice grants for local law enforcement. Those conditions came after the court preliminarily enjoined enforcement of the first executive order in April. That case is ongoing.
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