Courts deal Trump double-whammy on sanctuary cities and trans military ban

Donald Trump

Amidst all the grim news hanging over us these days, it’s worth remembering that good things do happen. Here’s some: Trump just had a bad couple days in court. Now relax and enjoy the schadenfreude.

First, a federal judge yesterday killed one of Trump’s first executive orders wherein he tried to cut off funding to “sanctuary cities” that refuse to sell out undocumented immigrants to the federal government:

In a summary judgment ruling, U.S. District Judge William Orrick III found Trump’s Jan. 25 executive order violated the Constitution in multiple ways: by invoking spending powers that belong exclusively to Congress, and by placing unrelated conditions on federal grants in violation of the Tenth Amendment.

“Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration enforcement strategy of which the President disapproves,” Orrick wrote in a 28-page ruling.

Orrick temporarily banned the executive order in April after San Francisco and Santa Clara County filed separate lawsuits against the presidential directive.

With billions in annual federal aid on the line, both jurisdictions cited the risk of major budget uncertainty. San Francisco receives $1.2 billion in annual federal aid and $800 million in multiyear grants, while Santa Clara County relies on $1.7 billion each year to fund essential services, including public health and child protective services.

And today, a second federal judge (following a similar ruling last month) has blocked the trans military ban from going into effect, citing the harm it would cause to trans troops who already face hardship:

In a 53-page ruling, US District Court Judge Marvin Garbis in Maryland concluded that transgender service members are "already suffering harmful consequences," and went a step further than an earlier ruling by specifically prohibiting the Trump administration from blocking those challenging the ban from completing their medically necessary surgeries.

"They have further demonstrated that they are already suffering harmful consequences such as the cancellation and postponements of surgeries, the stigma of being set apart as inherently unfit, facing the prospect of discharge and inability to commission as an officer, the inability to move forward with long-term medical plans, and the threat to their prospects of obtaining long-term assignments," Garbis wrote. "Waiting until after the directives have been implemented to challenge their alleged violation of constitutional rights only subjects them to substantial risk of even greater harms."

The judge, a Bush Sr. appointee, was “particularly unmoved” by the Justice Department’s claim that Trump’s Twitter-announcement of the ban totally didn’t count as a policy decision, and he did not mince words:

"A capricious, arbitrary, and unqualified tweet of new policy does not trump the methodical and systematic review by military stakeholders qualified to understand the ramifications of policy changes."

“Capricious”, “arbitrary” and “unqualified” … I think he just described the entire Trump presidency.

(via Joe.My.God.)