Seattle likely safe from threats over ‘sanctuary’ status

The City of Seattle likely won’t lose any federal funding because of its decision to be a so-called “sanctuary city.”

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A federal judge in San Francisco permanently blocked President Trump’s order to cut funding to sanctuary cities.

“This doesn’t really change much,” CBS News Legal analyst Andrew Cohen explains. “Because this judge had already enjoined the order earlier this year. This order though is more complete and it’s another example where the president’s public comments came back to bite the administration. The judge cited the president, calling the order a weapon against these cities and that undermined the government’s case.”

The Trump administration will appeal, but Cohen doesn’t think that even a conservative Supreme Court would overturn this because conservatives don’t like to mess with the Constitution.

“The argument against the sanctuary city order is actually quite a conservative one,” Cohen says. “The idea that the feds cannot change the rules about funding without congressional approval. Another argument is they have to be mindful of state’s rights under the Tenth Amendment.”

The basic legal concept here is that under the Constitution, the president does not have the power to spend or not spend money that Congress has already appropriated, and he can’t just attach new strings to that money just because he wants to.

Previously, Attorney General Jeff Sessions warned local governments that declared themselves a “sanctuary” that they would not receive grants for refusing to cooperate. Seattle sued the federal government over the threats while Ed Murray was still in office.

“Once again, this new administration has decided to bully,” Murray said at the time. “But bullying and misstating the facts will not stand in the way of how the real laws in this country are enforced.”

Under this new order, states and cities are still free to pro-actively help immigration authorities round up immigrants who don’t have their documents, but Sanctuary cities are also free to not, as long they don’t violate any laws.

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