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President Donald Trump observes during a formal swearing-in ceremony for Paul Atkins as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Oval Office at the White House on Tuesday, April 22, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
A federal judge on Friday cautioned the Trump administration against attempting to circumvent a court order that prohibits the government from reducing funds to so-called “sanctuary” areas.
In the underlying lawsuit, San Francisco, among others, filed a case against President Donald Trump and others in response to two executive orders — “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” and “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders” — issued respectively in January and February, which threatened to withdraw all federal funding from jurisdictions not aligning with federal immigration policies.
On April 24, Senior U.S. District Judge William Orrick, a Barack Obama appointee, bemoaned the state of affairs as something of a rerun.
In a preliminary injunction, the judge likened the latest funding threats to a series of similarly kiboshed threats issued during the first Trump administration — and blocked them again, reasoning the plaintiffs had a well-founded fear of enforcement warranting an injunction.
Then, a few days passed.
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On April 28, Trump issued what the plaintiffs, in a motion to enforce the injunction, termed “yet another” executive order “which triples down on his threat to defund ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions.”
Quick motions practice ensued, with the government filing a motion in opposition. An expedited hearing was held earlier this week.
On Friday, in a 6-page order clarifying the preliminary injunction, Orrick framed the issue as a question — and then answered it.
“How will the litigation over sanctuary cities and federal funding unfold during the next four years?” the judge asked. “First, the litigation may not proceed with the coercive threat to end all federal funding hanging over the Cities and Counties’ heads like the sword of Damocles.”
Such threats, the judge said, were “explicit” in the earlier executive orders — as well as an implementing directive issued by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi — “and that is why they are enjoined.”
The judge’s order attempts to strike a balance, however, stressing that while the government “must proceed within the bounds of the Constitution,” the injunction is not meant to intrude on or block other attempts by the Trump administration “to identify particular grants and funding programs that it believes should be conditioned upon compliance with immigration-related objectives.”
To that end, Orrick says the entirety of the latest executive order is not “improper.”
To make this point, the judge highlights a section where Trump directs Bondi, in coordination with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, to “publish a list of States and local jurisdictions they have identified as ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions, and to notify those jurisdictions of their status on the list.”
Similarly, the judge says, a section of the new order directing officials to “identify appropriate Federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions, including grants and contracts, for suspension or termination” might also pass muster — though he cautions this requirement comes “closer” to being verboten under the preliminary injunction.
But even then, if this is just another list-making directive, the judge says, cataloging of could-be-withheld funds is acceptable.
“Identification of the funds the Government believes are at issue would, if done in a constitutionally targeted way, provide clarity,” Orrick muses. “The requirement to identify funds for potential rescission, by itself, is not inappropriate, following an evaluation of the type of funding involved to determine if there is a nexus between the funding stream, the jurisdiction’s policies, and the desired immigration-related conditions, as the Government is constitutionally obligated to do before it acts.”
And a list, the government says in their response, is all the new order really calls for. Still, the judge says not just any list will work.
From the order, at length:
What would be inappropriate is if the criterion for identification of funds for “suspension or termination” was the fact that the so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions received them. If the Government were to take the unconstitutional approach of flagging all federal funds (or funds unrelated to sanctuary policies) to those States and localities the Attorney General and DHS Secretary determined to be “sanctuary” jurisdictions as being “appropriate” for suspension or termination, it would violate Constitution in the same way that the enjoined sections of EO 14,159 and EO 14,218 do. That approach would violate the Preliminary Injunction.
The judge goes on to say “the context” surrounding the new order and the earlier ones suggests the government might use the list “to unconstitutionally coerce” the jurisdictions at issue “into changing their policies and practices to conform with the second Trump Administration’s preferences.”
Such actions would go beyond merely making a limited list that clarifies immigration priorities, the court determined.
In clarifying the injunction, the judge says his earlier order has an extremely broad reach over likely objectionable conduct.
“The Preliminary Injunction in this case reaches any subsequent Executive Order or Government action that poses the same coercive threat to eliminate or suspend federal funding based on the Government’s assertion that a jurisdiction is a ‘sanctuary’ jurisdiction,” Orrick writes. “In light of all these considerations, I clarify that neither Executive Order 14,287 nor any other Government action that postdates the Preliminary Injunction can be used as an end run around the Preliminary Injunction Order.”
