9th Circuit rules in DOJ's favor in sanctuary cities case

[Eugene]

Source: CNN

9th Circuit rules in DOJ's favor in sanctuary cities case

By Caroline Kelly
Updated 1536 GMT (2336 HKT) July 13, 2019

(CNN) — The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled in favor of the Trump administration, saying the Department of Justice could give preference in awarding grants to cities that would use the money to focus on illegal immigration, as the federal government prepares to seek out undocumented immigrants in raids this weekend.

The City of Los Angeles sued the Department of Justice because it did not receive any funding from the Community Oriented Policing Services grant program, which is aimed at initiatives to build trust between communities and law enforcement agencies. Los Angeles chose "building trust and respect" as its focus area and did not mention illegal immigration in its application because of its policy as a sanctuary city.

The panel of judges ruled that "because DOJ's scoring factors encouraged, but did not coerce, an applicant to cooperate on immigration matters, the panel also rejected Los Angeles's claims that DOJ's use of the factors infringed on state autonomy in a manner that raised Tenth Amendment concerns."

"DOJ did not exceed its statutory authority in awarding bonus points to applicants that selected the illegal immigration focus area," the judges wrote, arguing that "DOJ's determination that the techniques of community policing may be used to address this public safety issue (illegal immigration) was entirely reasonable."

-snip-

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/12/politics/ninth-circuit-doj-los-angeles-grants-sanctuary-city/index.html

[pecosbob]

1. Now they have funding for their brownshirts

[Karadeniz]

2. Doesn't this overturn previous decisions?

[Roland99]

3. Isn't the 9th the appeals court Twitler has ALWAYS criticized?

[Hortensis]

4. Unfortunate, but federal grants have been awarded with

strings requiring they be used as the current administration wishes for a long time. This does not seem to be a dramatic change from before.

Two conservative-appointed judges, one liberal. This'll no doubt be appealed to SCOTUS.

[Blue_true]

5. It does not have to be appealed to the SCOTUS.

The full 9th Circuit can overrule them and appoint a larger panel of judges, just like it did two weeks ago in another case, when again a panel of three right leaning judges ruled for Trump.

You have to realize the 9th Circuit covers a big area with a lot of conservative states in that area. Three panel judges are drawn randomly, so that could end with three federal judges from conservative states. But the full 9th Citcuit and even a larger panel of judges is more likely to be dominated by liberal or moderate judges since the biggest population states all but one (Arizona) lean liberal, so if a 7 judge panel is drawn, the liberals should be in the majority.

[Hortensis]

6. I'd forgotten that, sure this was just a 3-judge panel.

Trump's been packing these courts, upping the chance of drawing biased panels, but just checked for reassurance and the Ninth isn't conservative dominated yet.

Thanks for this nice thought to retire on.