Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Slowing Sanctuary Scam?
A three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a district (trial-level) judge’s decision on funding of sanctuary cities, and with it another fraudulent nation-wide injunction by a mere district judge. Voting 2-1, with two George W. Bush appointees, Judges Sandra Ikuta and Jay Bybee, supporting President Trump and the Clinton appointee, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, supporting the California and national Democrats’ position.
Here is the decision [PDF], in City of Los Angeles v Barr, handed down on July 12, 2019. From the case summary:
The panel reversed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the City of Los Angeles in an action challenging the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”)’s use of certain factors in determining scores for applicants to a competitive grant program – the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant program – that allocates a limited pool of funds to state and local applicants under the Public Safety Partnership and Community Policing Act (the “Act”), enacted as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
[…]
The panel rejected Los Angeles’s argument that DOJ’s practice of giving additional consideration to applicants that choose to further the two specified federal goals violated the Constitution’s Spending Clause. 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.
The panel held that DOJ did not exceed its statutory authority in awarding bonus points to applicants that selected the illegal immigration focus area or that agreed to the Certification. Specifically, the panel first held that DOJ’s understanding that illegal immigration presents a public safety issue has been acknowledged by the Supreme Court. Second, DOJ’s determination that the techniques of community policing may be used to address this public safety issue was entirely reasonable. Finally, because Congress did not directly address the precise question at issue, the panel must defer to DOJ’s interpretation as long as it is reasonable.
The panel held that DOJ did not act arbitrarily and capriciously under the Administrative Procedure Act when it decided to give points for adopting the illegal immigration focus and submitting the Certification.
This decision makes more likely that cities and states cannot subvert national immigration law without any cost in annual funding. The White House was naturally happy with the result, the new Press Secretary issuing a statement:
Statement from the Press Secretary Regarding Victory in Ninth Circuit Sanctuary Cities Case
Issued on: July 12, 2019Today, the Ninth Circuit agreed that the Department of Justice can prioritize Federal discretionary grant dollars to support policing in cities and towns that cooperate with Federal efforts to remove illegal aliens from the country. This ruling reverses a lawless decision that enabled Sanctuary City policies, putting the safety and security of all Americans in harm’s way. Sanctuary Cities knowingly release criminal aliens out of their jails and back into our communities, instead of cooperating with ICE to ensure they are kept in custody and safely removed from the United States. Many innocent Americans are injured, maimed, or killed as a result of Sanctuary City policies. This ruling upholds the right of the Department of Justice to ensure discretionary grants under its control are not being used to subsidize these jurisdictions’ open assault on law-abiding Americans and their loved ones. We urge citizens across America to demand that Democrat leaders cease their support for Sanctuary policies that deprive Americans of life, limb, and liberty. The injustice of Criminal Sanctuaries must end.
It seems highly unlikely that Chief Justice John Roberts will join the leftists in overturning a decision by two Bush appointees. President Trump appears to have won an important lawfare skirmish. Those of us who care about our right as a people to determine our new membership, as a way of preserving our constitutional republic in the future, can briefly rejoice.
Published in Immigration
Just one more bit of evidence to establish Justice Robert’s foolishness when he said there were no Republican judges and no Democrat judges.
Clifford, this is such a solid professional summary and explanation of the consequences that I don’t even feel the need to go off-site to find out more about it. As much as we are part of an opinion site, a post like this makes R> a legitimate news site, superior to most of the so-called pros.
Thanks. I started off scanning the local and national news sites. None seemed to link to the primary sources. Too easy to do in this day and age. In this area, government actually has become more accessible, more “transparent” or at least translucent.
Along the way, I noticed another case in the Ninth Circuit in which it seems the appellate bench was placing conditions and restrictions on their district judges issuing nation-wide injunctions. I’ll poke into that further in another post.
The rest of us aren’t JDs.
Even those of us with leather jackets, motorcycles in their background, and a surly attitude.
Some of us are. Not that it means anything.
Sure it does. Like any other real world accomplishment, even conservatives with a cynical attitude about credentials will grudgingly admit that it takes discipline to get as far as a Juris Doctor.
Lol. I don’t remember being particularly disciplined.
Are you kidding me? Those law school nuns were tough!
Wait, wait, I’m thinking of my Catholic high school. Never mind.
Re the OP: Thanks for the report, Clifford. This is great news.
I’ve always despised the sanctuary city laws and the fact that there seemed to be no consequences for this flagrant violation of the law. Finally, justice. For now.
The losing side can still request the 9th Circuit for an en banc rehearing, and get another try at this level, if granted.
The en banc result could go the other way, and it might never get to the Supreme Court. But if it does, I will not count on CJ Roberts for anything good, as this case seems to be the type of hot potato issue that he seems unwilling to face squarely.
Instead, his approach (Obamacare, the census citizenship question) at times seems better described as squirrelly.
My law school had at least one nun.
I would quite interested in the issue of national injunctions. However, consider that DAPA was struck down nationally by a single District Court Judge in the Southern District of Texas. I could imagine a District Court Judge in California coming to a different conclusion.
If you were on the Supreme Court, would there be have a per se rule against national rulings, or would it limited to the Judicial District, State or Circuit?
Consider also that the Mexican border is controlled by three Circuits, the 5th, 9th and 10th!
In the long term, the process has worked, so far, in that the injunction was overturned. However, as with the citizenship question on the census, the timing is not conducive to the election cycle. Such injunctions should be very limited and rare. There needs to be a penalty for enjoining wrongly. But judges have no limits. That’s the real problem.
I think (50:50, push to me), that if I were on the Supreme Court, I would seek to apply a per se rule against national injunctions by any lower court. A 9th Circuit judge has no more authority to bind the 5th Circuit on border wall funding in its territorial jurisdiction than he or she does to bind that Circuit on criminal law.
We should want separate rulings, possibly separate injunctions, from the 5th, 9th and 10th Circuits so that there is either agreement, in which case the Supreme Court can decline to hear the cases on the basis of “no controversy,” or disagreement, in which case the Supreme Court can feel confident the issues have been fully litigated and are ripe for their consideration.
It looked, on my brief scan, like the 9th Circuit was not drawing such a hard line, but was moving towards some fairly restrictive guidelines designed to limit the number and support the legitimacy of nationwide injunctions issued by district courts.
I think that I agree with you, but this raises a side issue about Arizona’s state appellate courts.
In Arizona, we have trial level Superior Couts, a State Supreme Court, and since 1965, an intermediate level Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals consists of (1) Division 1 which sits in Phoenix and covers Maricopa County and the Arizona counties to the west, northwest , north and northeast of Phoenix, with three judge panels in Departments A, B, C, D, E, and F, and (2) Division 2 which sits in Tucson covers Pima County and the Arizona counties to the south, southeast and east of Tucson. with Departments A and B. Back when I was a Staff Attorney for Division 1, the judges of the Departments shifted every year, with each judge going from just a Judge in the Department, to being the Associate Presiding Judge in the Department, to being the Presiding Judge of the Department, before alternating to a new department. Division 1 and 2 each have a Chief Judge, also.
I don’t know how rural Arizona pulled this off, but for each 3 judge panel in Division 1, only 2 of the 3 judges come from Maricopa County which is the Phoenix Metro area, and 1 of the judges comes from one of the rural counties. In Division 2, only 2 of the 3 judges comes from Pima County which is the Tucson Metro area, and 1 of the judges comes from one of the rural counties.
This is now way out of balance. Maricopa County now has about 60% of the state’s population, Pima County now has about 20% and the 13 rural counties have about 20% But the rural counties with only 20% of the state population, get 33% of the intermediate appellate judges.
It is even more imbalanced when you consider that lawyers tend to live and practice in the urban areas and the state capital in Phoenix has lots of lawyers, per se. Also, the law schools are in Maricopa and Pima Counties. in other words, I would guess that while Maricopa and Pima Counties combined have about 80% of populations, they likely have about 90% of the lawyers, meaning that a third of the judges on the Court of Appeals come from only 10% of the lawyers statewide.
As a rural county chauvinist, that doesn’t trouble me so much in that I am sick and tired of hearing about how things happen in Maricopa (and Pima) Counties which dominate our state. (I have raised my hand to declare that I live in the State of Arizona and not in the State of Maricopa (or Pima). Also, some rural attorneys will say that they come from a clean air county, and not a dirty air county. So there!)
Finally, if I understand correctly, a decision from a 3 judge panel in Division 1 is not binding on a 3 judge panel from Division 2, but a decision from a 3 judge panel in one Department of Division 1 is binding on all 3 judge panels in Division 1. Go figure.
The pattern in the 9th Circuit is well – established. Decisions seen as favorable to conservatives aren’t unheard-of, but they always go en banc, often on the court’s own motion, where the three – judge panel’s decision is overturned. The only constant in the 9th Circuit is that, eventually, the socialists win.
That’s because the pros in this business lie. All people of the left are liars.
“All people of the left are liars.” Many of them are liars. But not “all” of them.
Well, if we’re going to get technical, I have to agree with Barfly. But, technically, I think that it goes for everyone on the right, too.
Years ago I was discussing why I voted Republican rather than Democrat. My answer was “I like their lies better.”
As Professor Kingsfield said to his first classes in “The Paper Chase”, “You come here with a skull full of mush, and you leave here thinking like a lawyer”.
That movie came out near the end of my first year in law school. My classmates and I couldn’t believe how close it tracked to our classroom experience.
Bishop Edmund J. Reilly Diocesan High School existed for only about a dozen years, but when the diocese was forced to retrench in the mid-Seventies recession, they were able to work out a gradual transfer of the property to St. Francis Preparatory School, so it’s still a Catholic high school. It was co-institutional, not co-educational. It was a beautiful, modern, air conditioned building, roughly boomerang-shaped with separate wings for boys and girls. So we rarely saw the nuns, and the girls rarely saw the brothers–monks, to most outsiders. Both sides had totally up to date libraries and science labs that would have been the envy of any secular high school. The community pinched itself to give us the best.
Actually, wait. I did see the nuns every day. Whole platoons, legions, battalions of them stood around grimly at the bus stops, making sure there was no mingling. They were tough about it. If their aim was to prevent the formation of Catholic couples, they had a number of singular successes.
Well … no. It really is “all”.
To be an individual of the left is to prize one’s mental model over God’s world, in fact to take one’s mental model to be reality. I suppose we could debate that at length, but all one needs is to observe that the things people of the left care about are things of the mind, while a mentally-well individual is focused on things of the world. People of the right have developed good mental hygiene in this respect.
Here’s a trivial example: People of the right know that every human (save a few with odd gene anomalies) is either male or female. Boys and girls are boys and girls from the subcellular scale to the societal. People of the left, however, hold that biology is of less significance than a transient or diseased state of mind.
When a person of the right speaks to another in depth, on some serious or difficult topic, they make regular reference to things in the real world. They say “Look at this. See? It is …” People of the left, on the other hand, invariably try to influence the other’s thought directly. That, to me, is the essence of lying.
People of the right say “Look! See this!” People of the left demand “Ignore what you see! Think this!”
So it’s complicated, but yes – I do hold that every person of the left is a liar. My definitions aren’t accepted by most people, I’ll grant. There are plenty of liars on the right as well. But to be of the left is to be a liar – there’s no way a person of the left cannot lie, because they’re afraid of what they’ll see if they stop working to manufacture a substitute reality. It’s important to a person of the left that we all share their construct, because doubt is poison to fantasy.