President Trump’s order limiting federal funding to “sanctuary cities” was ruled unconstitutional by a federal appeals court on Wednesday. A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said federal funding could be withheld only with congressional authorization. The appeals court noted that the U.S. District Court went too far by blocking the policy nationwide, and sent back the case for “reconsideration and further findings,” reports Politico. Trump signed an executive order in January 2017 that dealt with immigration enforcement. The 9th Circuit ruled against a provision that limited funding to jurisdictions that don’t cooperate with federal immigration enforcement — also known as sanctuary cities.
The Trump order focused on a federal statute that prohibits federal, state and local officials from restricting the sharing of information related to an individual’s immigration or citizenship status. While the appeals court didn’t rule on that statute, U.S.C. 1373, a Chicago federal judge in July found it unconstitutional in separate lawsuit over withholding of federal grants over immigration enforcement. That ruling was limited to the city of Chicago. The Justice Department called the 9th Circuit ruling “a victory for criminal aliens in California, who can continue to commit crimes knowing that the state’s leadership will protect them from federal immigration officers whose job it is to hold them accountable and remove them from the country.” In the lawsuit against the Trump administration, Santa Clara County said that $1.7 billion in federal money was in jeopardy, while San Francisco cited $1.2 billion. Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Sidney Thomas cited a Trump statement to Bill O’Reilly that if the federal government were forced to give money to California and its sanctuary cities, “we give tremendous amounts of money to California … California in many ways is out of control.”