Like many localities around the country, the City and County of San Francisco and the state of California receive federal funding from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (“Byrne JAG”) Program to help them enhance public safety as they see fit.  Byrne JAG grant amounts are calculated using a statutory formula keyed to the jurisdiction’s population and violent crime rate, and there are minimal limits on the public safety and criminal justice uses to which funds may be allocated.  Despite this, in July 2017, United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions sought to mandate new funding conditions for every Byrne JAG grant in an attempt to coerce recipients into changing their immigration policies.  The City and County of San Francisco and the state of California sued Sessions in federal district court challenging his authority to impose the new conditions.

In August 2018, CAC filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Northern District of California on behalf of members of Congress in support of the City and County of San Francisco and California. On October 5, 2018, the district court granted California and San Francisco’s motions for summary judgment and permanently enjoined the Attorney General’s effort to impose new conditions on Byrne JAG grantees.  The district court’s order cited our amicus brief, noting that “Congress intentionally entrusted state and local jurisdictions with the discretion to tailor funds to their needs, recognizing the need for ‘flexibility to spend [federal] money for programs that work for them rather than to impose a “one size fits all” solution.’”

As we did in the district court, in May 2019, CAC filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Ninth Circuit on behalf of members of Congress in support of the City and County of San Francisco and California. In our brief, we explained that in establishing the Byrne JAG grant program, Congress neither imposed the challenged conditions on grant recipients, nor authorized the Attorney General to impose them.  Congress designed the program as a formula grant to ensure that states and localities would have maximum flexibility in determining how to best improve public safety in their respective jurisdictions.  The Attorney General’s coercive conditions are not only at odds with this flexibility but also undermine public safety by decreasing trust and cooperation between the police force and crime victims and witnesses in many neighborhoods.  Moreover, as we also explained, the statute on which the Attorney General principally relies does not concern either the Byrne JAG program or the Attorney General and thus provides no support for what he is attempting to do here.  Finally, we argued that the Attorney General’s attempt to administratively write into law new grant conditions runs afoul of fundamental constitutional principles.  The Framers recognized the dangers of concentrated power in the hands of a single government branch, and thus gave the authority to impose conditions on the receipt of federal financial assistance to Congress.  The Attorney General’s coercive actions cannot be squared with the constitutional separation-of-powers principles or the Framers’ decision to give Congress the power of the purse.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed in part, and vacated in part, the district court’s ruling permanently enjoining the DOJ from imposing new funding conditions on recipients of Byrne-JAG grants.  Specifically, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the district court that DOJ does not have the authority to impose new funding conditions on recipients of Byrne-JAG grant funds, but held that the nationwide injunction was broader than warranted.