REGIME SCOFFLAWS STUFFED AGAIN: 7th Cir. Blasts Barr’s Bogus Battle Bashing Local Law Enforcement In Chicago, Other Cities — Unconstitutional! — Nationwide Injunction Affirmed — “But states do not forfeit all autonomy over their own police power merely by accepting federal grants.“

Dan Kowalski
Dan Kowalski
Online Editor of the LexisNexis Immigration Law Community (ILC)

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/insidenews/posts/ca7-on-byrne-jag-grant-conditions-chicago-v-barr

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration Community:

CA7 on Byrne JAG Grant Conditions: Chicago v. Barr

Chicago v. Barr

“We conclude again today, as we did when presented with the preliminary injunction, that the Attorney General cannot pursue the policy objectives of the executive branch through the power of the purse or the arm of local law enforcement; that is not within its delegation. It is the prerogative of the legislative branch and the local governments, and the Attorney General’s assertion that Congress itself provided that authority in the language of the statutes cannot withstand scrutiny. … Accordingly, we affirm the grants of declaratory relief as to the declarations that the Attorney General exceeded the authority delegated by Congress in the Byrne JAG statute, 34 U.S.C. § 10151 et seq., and in 34 U.S.C. § 10102(a), in attaching the challenged conditions to the FY 2017 and FY 2018 grants, and that the Attorney General’s decision to attach the conditions to the FY 2017 and FY 2018 Byrne JAG grants violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers. In light of our determination as to the language in § 10153, it is unnecessary to reach the constitutionality of § 1373 under the anticommandeering doctrine of the Tenth Amendment. We affirm the district court’s grant of injunctive relief as to the application of the challenged conditions to the Byrne JAG grant program-wide now and in the future, which included enjoining the Attorney General from denying or delaying issuance of the Byrne JAG award to grants in FY 2017, FY 2018, FY 2019 and any other future program year insofar as that denial or delay is based on the challenged conditions or materially identical conditions. We remand for the district court to determine if any other injunctive relief is appropriate in light of our determination that § 10153 cannot be used to incorporate laws unrelated to the grants or grantees. Finally, because the injunctive relief is necessary to provide complete relief to Chicago itself, the concern with improperly extending relief beyond the particular plaintiff does not apply, and therefore there is no reason to stay the application of the injunctive relief.”

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The complete 111-page decision is available at the above link.

The 7th Circuit Panel was BAUER, MANION, AND ROVNER, Circuit Judges. The opinion is by Judge Rovner. Judge Manion filed a separate opinion concurring in the legal analysis, but dissenting from the nationwide scope of the injunction.

The 7th Circuit strongly upholds the Constitutional separation of powers and local jurisdictions’ rights to police in a manner that protects their local communities. Compare this with the obsequious kowtowing to Executive abuses by the Second Circuit in State of New York v. Barr,  https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/02/27/2d-cir-to-ny-six-other-so-called-sanctuary-states-tough-noogies-trump-rules/

Some Federal Courts stand up for our rights in the face of Trump’s tyranny; others “roll over.” History will be their judge!

That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the “JR Five” on the Supremes — who seldom see a White Nationalist abuse of authority picking on immigrants that they aren’t willing to validate — will “torque the law and the facts as necessary” to further the regime’s scofflaw, xenophobic agenda.

History eventually will catch up with them too. History recognizes neither life tenure nor “absolute immunity.”

Due Process Forever!

Continue reading REGIME SCOFFLAWS STUFFED AGAIN: 7th Cir. Blasts Barr’s Bogus Battle Bashing Local Law Enforcement In Chicago, Other Cities — Unconstitutional! — Nationwide Injunction Affirmed — “But states do not forfeit all autonomy over their own police power merely by accepting federal grants.“

GONZO’S WORLD: AG’S ASSAULT ON CONSTITUTION & SEPARATION OF POWERS TOO MUCH FOR SOME GOP-APPOINTED ARTICLE IIIs!

 

James Hohmann writes in the Washington Post:

THE BIG IDEA:

A panel of three judges, each appointed by a Republican president to the federal appeals court in Chicago, ruled unanimously on Thursday against President Trump’s effort to withhold money from “sanctuary cities.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld a nationwide injunction that blocks the Justice Department from using “the sword of federal funding to conscript state and local authorities to aid in federal civil immigration enforcement.”

Trump’s latest courtroom defeat offers yet another civics lesson about checks and balances for the first president in American history who lacks any prior governing or military experience. Unlike congressional Republicans who have by and large kowtowed and capitulated to Trumpism, despite private uneasiness and grumbling in many cases, Republican-appointed judges are free not to care about the wrath of the president or blowback from his loyalists. This gives them the breathing room to worry more about the rule of law than partisanship. That was the point of an independent judiciary and giving lifetime appointments. It’s how the Constitution is supposed to work.

Judge Ilana Rovner, who was appointed to a district judgeship by Ronald Reagan and elevated to the circuit by George H.W. Bush, offers a remarkable rebuke of the Trump administration in a 35-page opinion that can be read as a tutorial on the separation of powers. She even throws around words like “tyranny” that you don’t often see in opinions of this nature:

“Our role in this case is not to assess the optimal immigration policies for our country,” she writes. “Rather, the issue before us strikes at one of the bedrock principles of our nation, the protection of which transcends political party affiliation and rests at the heart of our system of government …

“The founders of our country well understood that the concentration of power threatens individual liberty and established a bulwark against such tyranny by creating a separation of powers among the branches of government. If the Executive Branch can determine policy, and then use the power of the purse to mandate compliance with that policy by the state and local governments, all without the authorization or even acquiescence of elected legislators, that check against tyranny is forsaken …

“Congress repeatedly refused to approve of measures that would tie funding to state and local immigration policies. Nor … did Congress authorize the Attorney General to impose such conditions. It falls to us, the judiciary, as the remaining branch of the government, to act as a check on such usurpation of power. We are a country that jealously guards the separation of powers, and we must be ever‐vigilant in that endeavor.”

Rovner, 79, and her parents fled Latvia, and the Nazis, when she was an infant. She lost family members in the Holocaust. She often says that she decided to become a lawyer to stop anything like that genocide from happening again. Displayed in her chambers are the green card she was issued when she arrived in America in 1939 and her mother’s passport. “These are the things that saved my life,” she told the Chicago Tribune for a 2011 profile.

Her scathing opinion was joined by Judge William Bauer, who was appointed by Gerald Ford. Judge Daniel Manion, who Reagan put on the bench, wrote a concurrence saying he would have narrowed the injunction to protect only Chicago, rather than keeping it national.

The injunction was ordered last September by District Judge Harry Leinenweber, who was also appointed by Reagan.

2:02
Sessions in 2017: ‘Sanctuary’ cities lead to crime

Attorney General Jeff Sessions criticized Chicago’s sanctuary city policy while speaking in Miami on Aug. 16, 2017.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has tried to require that cities give federal immigration agents access to undocumented immigrants who are in their jails in order to get certain public safety grants. This effort has already been blocked in separate lawsuits by federal judges in California and Pennsylvania. The judge who blocked the administration from holding back money from Philadelphia, Michael Baylson, was appointed by George W. Bush and wrote an unusually long 128-page ruling against the administration in November.

The 7th Circuit opinion yesterday complains that the term sanctuary cities “is commonly misunderstood” and “a red herring.” Contrary to popular understanding, the judges explain, “the federal government can and does freely operate in ‘sanctuary’ localities.”

— The Justice Department quickly criticized the ruling, saying the administration continues to believe it has the power to attach strings to money appropriated by Congress and complaining that courts keep issuing broad injunctions that thwart Trump. “Many in the legal community have expressed concern that the use of nationwide injunctions is inconsistent with the separation of powers, and that their increased use creates a dangerous precedent,” DOJ spokesman Devin O’Malley said in a statement. “We will continue to fight to carry out the department’s commitment to the rule of law, protecting public safety, and keeping criminal aliens off the streets to further perpetrate crimes.”

— Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel held an afternoon news conference to blast Trump as petty for refusing to hand over the grant money while the case continues to play out in the courts. “The Trump Justice Department could actually say ‘OK, we’re going to go forward with these grants, and let’s fight the case out in court,’” said the Democrat, who was Barack Obama’s first White House chief of staff. “But they refuse to give municipalities like Chicago and other cities around the country the resources to fight crime and gun violence, because they think fighting us on the principle of being a sanctuary, welcoming city, is more important than helping the police departments get the technology they need to do a better job in public safety.”

1:00
Supreme Court restricts deportations of immigrant felons

The Supreme Court ruled on April 17 that an immigration statute requiring the deportation of noncitizens who commit felonies is unlawfully vague.

— This is just the latest legal setback for Trump when it comes to his far-reaching immigration agenda.

On Tuesday, Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the Supreme Court’s four liberal members to strike down part of a federal law used to deport noncitizens who commit felonies on the grounds that it was unconstitutionally vague. The 5-to-4 decision could limit the government’s ability to deport people with criminal records, a Trump priority.

“Vague laws invite arbitrary power,” Gorsuch wrote in a concurring opinion. “Today’s vague laws … can invite the exercise of arbitrary power all the same — by leaving the people in the dark about what the law demands and allowing prosecutors and courts to make it up.”

“For the conservative Gorsuch to align with the liberals might seem a surprise, but his vote was in keeping with questions he asked during oral argument in October. And he was in part following in the footsteps of the justice he replaced, the late Antonin Scalia,” explains Supreme Court beat reporter Robert Barnes. “In 2015, Scalia wrote the court’s decision in Johnson v. United States, which struck down a similarly vague description of violent felony in the Armed Career Criminal Act.”

— Trump is incensed about Gorsuch’s vote. Administration officials say the president has been complaining to them that the justice “had proved too liberal in recent cases,” Robert Costa, Josh Dawsey and Rosalind S. Helderman report. “Associates … said it renewed his doubts that Gorsuch would be a reliable conservative. One top Trump adviser played down the comments as unhappiness with Gorsuch’s decision rather than with Gorsuch broadly.”

— In February, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s request to immediately review the lower court decisions that prevent him from ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). Getting cert. would have only taken four votes, which means at least one GOP appointee opposed the administration’s request. The litigation over the fate of the “dreamers” will now follow the normal process, winding through the circuit courts.

1:35

President-elect Donald Trump pledged to end “sanctuary cities” while campaigning for the White House. Washington, D.C., is one such city.

— The courts have proved vexing for Trump since his first days in office. District Judge James Robart in Washington state, who was nominated by George W. Bush in 2004, halted the president’s first travel ban, which blocked citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States.

“The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!” Trump tweeted angrily.

But it wasn’t. A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit, which included another Bush 43 nominee, unanimously agreed. The administration withdrew the ban and issued another watered-down version.

— Barack Obama also lost cases in the courts, including on immigration. But he typically failed before conservative judges who had been appointed by Republicans more than judges appointed by his Democratic predecessors. The Harvard-educated former constitutional law professor had a much better record. To be sure, most judges appointed by Republicans are still siding with the administration most of the time. And Trump is remaking the judicial branch by appointing nominees who share his worldview.

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We should remember that it actually was GOP appointees like Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit and Chief Judge John Walker of the 2nd Circuit (a cousin of President George W. Bush) who led the “Charge of Judicial Outrage” that eventually shut down the “assembly line removal system” set up by Ashcroft following his infamous “BIA Purge.”

PWS

04-20-18

SCOFFLAW SESSIONS LOSES AGAIN ON SANCTUARY CITIES – 7TH CIRCUIT FINDS SESSIONS’S ACTIONS UNCONSTITUTIONAL “Usurpation Of Power” — City of Chicago v. Sessions

Trump and Sessions lose another sanctuary cities case

By: Tal Kopan, CNN

A federal appeals court struck another blow Thursday to the Trump administration’s efforts to pressure sanctuary cities, upholding a court order preventing the Justice Department from imposing conditions on grants to cities.

The three-judge panel from the 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s decision blocking the Justice Department from adding new conditions on policing grants that had required some cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

The ruling makes it the latest federal court, along with courts in California and Philadelphia, to restrict what the administration can try to do to pressure jurisdictions that restrict some cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

It comes as President Donald Trump has been targeting his fury on Twitter at sanctuary cities, which administration officials accuse of jeopardizing public safety.

The judges sided with the city of Chicago in the case, which had challenged Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ July effort to condition the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program on two new requirements: allowing federal immigration authorities access to local detention facilities and providing the Department of Homeland Security with at least 48 hours’ notice before local officials release an undocumented immigrant wanted by federal authorities.

The administration has been aggressive in asking cities to comply with those requests, but a number of cities and police chiefs around the country argue that cooperating in that way could jeopardize the trust police need to have with local communities, and in some cases could place departments in legal gray areas.

Like the district judge, the appellate judges found that Chicago was likely to succeed in its case that such conditions would be a violation of the Constitution and law, as Congress did not authorize those conditions when it created the grants.

The judge who wrote the opinion called the attorney general’s move a “usurpation of power.”

More: http://www.cnn.com/2018/04/19/politics/court-rules-against-trump-sessions-sanctuary-cities-chicago/index.html

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Our Attorney General continues to thumb his nose at the Constitution while wasting judicial time. That’s what the “rule of law” means in “Gonzoland.”

Here’s a link to the 7th Circuit’s full decision written by Judge Rovner.

7thChicagoSanctuaryInjunction

PWS

0-9-18