WASHINGTON—Longtime sanctuary city San Francisco, faced with a cut-off of federal funding by the Trump Administration because of its sanctuary policies, brought suit in federal district court, demanding that the court order its funding continued even as it continues to pursue noncooperation policies aimed at protecting criminal aliens and illegal aliens from federal law enforcement. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California obligingly granted its request.
Tuesday evening, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) filed a brief in the case on appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, urging reversal.
IRLI points out in its brief that the city had no standing to ask the court to protect its sanctuary policies, because those policies, being in conflict with federal immigration law, violate the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. Thus, the lower court did not even have jurisdiction to save the city from the choice Trump has put it to: either lose the funding or cease protecting illegal aliens and criminal aliens from federal law enforcement.
IRLI also shows in its brief that the city’s claim under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause must fail, because the city has no protected property interest in receiving money from the federal government.
“Rather than follow federal law and the Constitution, San Francisco claims a right to keep the money flowing even as it goes on breaking the law,” said Christopher J. Hajec, acting executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “But San Francisco has no right to federal taxpayers’ dollars, and no court can enter an injunction to protect the city’s future lawbreaking. We hope the court sees how the unlawfulness of San Francisco’s sanctuary policies deprived the lower court of jurisdiction, and reverses.”
The case is City and County of San Francisco v. Trump, No. 25-3889 (Ninth Circuit).
